


What Comes Next

by Face_of_Poe



Series: The Conway Cabal [5]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Politics, Anxiety, Background Relationships, Established Relationship, Families of Choice, Family Issues, Gen, M/M, Minor Aaron Burr/Theodosia Prevost Burr, Panic Attacks, Past Underage Sex, Press and Tabloids, Sexual Content, estranged family, past abusive relationship, sex scandal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-14
Updated: 2018-10-02
Packaged: 2019-06-27 08:53:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 77,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15682092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Face_of_Poe/pseuds/Face_of_Poe
Summary: More than six years after the dramatic conclusion of Alexander's term as a Senate page and he's back in D.C., busy juggling two roles in President Washington's White House while John and Edward are even busier during their third year of med school. When one of those roles lands him squarely in the sights of a Congressional oversight committee and in the public eye, the ensuing debacle threatens his place of comfortable obscurity and his fraught relationship with his estranged brother, while political maneuvering ahead of the next presidential election puts long-held secrets at risk of coming to light at last.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Holy hell, folks.  
> It's been just over 11 months since Senate Floor wrapped up. All the virtual hugs and cookies for anyone returning for this new gratuitous drama after all that time, and even more virtual hugs and cookies for everyone who's stumbled on the series in the meantime and decided that 100k+ words of a Hamilton/Conway fic was something you were going to check out. :D 
> 
> I'm a little ways into ch 15 (of 18) writing-wise. I'll post at least 2 chapters a week until it's done and then put it out a little faster (because after months writing, you can bet your ass I'm the world's most impatient poster).
> 
> There will be a handful of chapter specific warnings for a couple more explicit scenes, a sensitive conversation or two, etc. 
> 
> As far as background - what with the time jump, so much of this is rooted in the snapshot scenes of Alexander's life from college-on in _Shouting in the Square_ , that fic is super important for context and characters. I am also always glad/delighted to answer any questions here or on Tumblr (faceofpoe). _What We Can Never Understand_ adds some weight to some events in this fic but shouldn't be necessary to understand anything going on. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

An hour since his boss left, and the cramped NEC suite is eerily still and quiet. The _click-clack_ of his own keyboard, the _tick-tock_ of the clock on the wall behind his cluttered cubicle, the occasional squeak of dress shoes or rhythmic clip of heels on the polished marble floors outside their little corner of the basement, heading for the stairs and the freedom of the long Thanksgiving weekend.

Alexander types away. Postpones his freedom in the interests of catching up on a few emails and putting the final touches on a briefing packet for a meeting at the end of next week. Enjoys the space like this, uninterrupted and lulled by the ambient noise, and if he takes a moment every so often to answer a personal text, well – there’s no one there to care about his productivity anyway.

So he stays late and gets work done before he has to go meet a flight landing just before six, and even then he’ll _still_ beat John and Edward home. If this round of their respective clinical rotations is anything to go by so far, the magnanimity of giving them the actual holiday off means there’s not a chance in hell of cutting out early the evening before.

But they’ll have tomorrow together, which is better than he can say for those years while John was in London and he was in New York and Edward was on Saint Croix. Still, he gets melancholy over those all-too-brief traditions, and so he sends a text. 

_To: Olivia Wolcott_

_Got your ‘yes, ma, the news is still on today’ wine lined up yet?_

And not a minute later:

_From: Olivia Wolcott_

_And an unsuspecting intern to help me drink it_.

 

He chuckles and goes back to his computer. Skims over his last couple changes to the file and then forwards it to Morris for a final review and approval. Considers that this moment here might be the single starkest contrast to that frenetic energy of working at the _Evening Post_. An emptying building, the stifled atmosphere of his basement workspace instead of the bustling chaos of Manhattan out floor-to-ceiling windows any direction he looked across the newsroom.

A new email pops up from Colonel Mercer’s admin team and he starts perusing that when his phone buzzes again. Expecting a follow-up from Olivia, he sighs when he reads it and puts it back down. 

_From: Lucia H._

_Happy Thanksgiving, Alex. Are you going to Charleston again this year?_

He makes a mental note to respond to it before he leaves the building, but she must be pretty accustomed by now to his habit of fretting over a response for so long that he actually forgets to send one entirely for a day or two. 

Another half hour slides lazily by, the sounds of random passers-by fewer and farther between. Without warning, the suite’s overheard lights go out all at once, and Alexander blinks up at the ceiling once, twice; shrugs, and goes back to comparing data points.

“Incroyable.” He chuckles and glances over his shoulder to find Lafayette watching him, resignedly amused. Or possibly amusedly resigned. “Morris told me on his way out that I might need to evict you from the building, but I’m thinking perhaps you just need a cot.”

Alexander checks the time on his screen. “I was going to leave in another twenty, anyway.”

“The president is nearly ready to depart for Virginia for the weekend; cleaning staff will get to work as soon as he’s gone.”

“Hm.” He fixes a line on his spreadsheet. “Twenty minutes, I promise.”

A pause, and then: “Adrienne is upstairs, she hoped to say hello.”

“I will make it ten, then,” he vows.

He can hear Lafayette’s footsteps turn towards the hall again. Hears him approach the threshold before he halts and adds, “She brought the girls.”

He smacks the save icon and closes his laptop. “I am on my way.”

It’s the work of barely a minute to jam his computer into his bag, collect his keys, his id badge, and dart off after Lafayette. Not quite a run, but fast enough that his shoes slip at the base of the stairs and nearly send him careening into the older man, who glances down from the first step and smirks. “It would seem they’ve already started polishing the floors.”

When they walk into the chief of staff’s office, Adrienne promptly foists a fussy Virginie upon him and then reaches down to block Anastasie from getting into a cabinet with an air that suggests it’s an ongoing battle.

“Oh, would you look at that,” Lafayette remarks, plucking Anastasie from the cupboard and putting her down next to the desk instead, under which she immediately starts to crawl. “Even the woes of teething are soothed by Alexandre’s presence.”

The baby drools on him. “Gross.” She curls a fat fist into his shirt and then proceeds to gnaw on it with a plaintive whine. “I think I’ve been set up.”

Lafayette snatches a folder up from the desk and makes for the door. “And you fell for it beautifully.”

Adrienne tosses him a burp cloth before maneuvering around the desk to retrieve the more adventurous of the twins. “I’m not even sorry. No one’s slept in like, three nights, hi, how are you?”

“Phenomenal by comparison, it seems.” He bounces Virginie about in one arm and digs out his phone with the other. “You have any unsuspecting family coming for tomorrow?”

“Yes, thank God.” He snaps a selfie with his bleary-eyed charge and sends it to John. “My parents get in at eight, I fully plan to be asleep by nine and _maybe_ wake up in time to eat dinner tomorrow.” Thwarted at every turn, Anastasie decides to investigate Alexander’s shoe; he sits down, keen to avoid stepping on her, and then stands back up just as quickly when Virginie wails in his ear. “John and Edward don’t have to work tomorrow, do they?”

“No, no,” he assures her. “Today and Friday, though. They’ll get an honest-to-God break around Christmas.”

“Is your Albany tradition finally going to give way to the obligatory Laurens-family holiday gathering?”

He just grins. And then nearly steps on Anastasie when she grabs a fistful of the fabric of his pants at the knee and uses the leverage to wobble unsteadily onto her feet. “Wha- oh. When did that start?”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake – right _now_ ,” Adrienne puts her head in her hands, shakes it mournfully back and forth, and then straightens and shouts, “Gilbert Lafayette, get in here, she’s _mutinying_.”

Lafayette sticks his head in the room thirty seconds later. “Oh,” he observes flatly. “Bon.”

Anastasie grins up at him and proceeds to fall back down on her bottom. “Stay,” Alexander tells her, to no effect. “Is this one even _crawling_?” he nods to the unhappy lump in his arms.

“She’s mostly content to watch her sister get into trouble,” Adrienne admits. “I shudder to think what it’ll be like when they realize they can collaborate.”

His phone buzzes; he slides it from his pocket delicately, keen not to upset the teething mess in his arms. 

_From: John Laurens_

_What did you do to my sweet Ginny?_

Which is how – Virginie in one arm, phone in the opposite hand, painfully keen not to lose his footing as Anastasie tries to find purchase to pull up again – the president finds him ten seconds later. “Oh,” he hovers in the doorway, watching the scene with a smile playing across his lips. “Is Alexander babysitting, then?”

Adrienne shrugs from the chair where she’s got her head rested back, eyes closed. “Yup.”

“ _Help me, sir_ ,” he mouths.

Lafayette just laughs at him, but Washington follows up his own chuckle by crouching down and coaxing Anastasie to let go of Alexander, and she seems content enough in her new, higher perch when Washington stands back up. “You’re here late, Alexander.”

Lafayette coughs, not at all subtly, in the background. “I’m meeting Mister Stevens at the airport at six, there didn’t seem to be much point going home first.”

“Well then do give him my regards, if you would.”

“I will do that, Mister President, thank you.”

Washington shifts his attention over his shoulder to Lafayette. “I’m heading home; Martha will have my head if I’m not in a car in the next three minutes.”

The two walk out together, the ornerier of the twins still tucked securely in the president’s arms. Adrienne watches them go, a hopeful spark lighting her eyes. “You think he’ll get distracted and accidentally take Annie with him for the weekend?” 

“You’d miss her.”

“God help me, I would.”

x---x

He forgets his promise to answer Lucia’s text before he leaves the building and doesn’t dare attempt to maneuver his phone out of his pocket on the packed metro, but while he stands idly against the wall with one eye on the arrivals board opposite the way, he bites his lip and stares at her message some more. Taps out a slow response, deletes it. Starts over.

Repeats the process a few times before settling on something nearly identical to what he’d written in the first place. 

_To: Lucia H._

_Likewise; I hope everyone is well._

_Staying in – John has clinical rotations this year and free time is a thing of the past._

He doesn’t mention the guest he’s awaiting even as he sends the text. He doesn’t know how much of their admittedly sparse correspondence Lucia shares with James, but he feels a little weird advertising to the brother who’s been waiting nearly two years for Alexander to drum up the courage to actually _see_ him again that he’s spending Thanksgiving with the family who effectively replaced him.

And then he stops and shakes his head and can’t fathom _why_ he should feel weird about that, since the severing of their relationship a decade ago was entirely James’s doing. Which just kicks off a new circle of nerves and confusion and inexplicable guilt, and that keeps him broodingly occupied until a new rush of people come pouring into the baggage claim area and he realizes he missed the memo about the flight deplaning entirely.

Edward reliably goes home still for Christmas, but Alexander hasn’t returned to Saint Croix since the hurricane, and Mister Stevens has never pushed him to. But it means, consequently, that he’s not seen the man since he helped Edward move to D.C. over two years ago.

Still, the years have been kind enough, as a familiar smiling face comes into view. Maybe a few more gray hairs, a few more lines around his eyes. Maybe a few extra pounds. But still the same Mister Stevens who holds him at arm’s length and looks him over with some poorly-veiled pride behind his expression.

“Welcome back to our nation’s capital,” Alexander offers after a moment, and then gives a muffled _umph_ when he’s pulled into a hug. “Sorry Neddy couldn’t cut out early; it’s been a rough rotation.”

Mister Stevens ruffles his hair as he pulls back and then laughs at the red rising in Alexander’s cheeks. “Neddy’ll keep. You and I have plenty to catch up on in the meantime.”

“President Washington says hi, by the way.”

Mister Stevens grins and shakes his head, and turns to lead the way to the baggage carousel. “And _that_ will never not be weird.” Two years on and Alexander feels the same way about even walking into the building, so he gets that. “I have some less impressive greetings to pass on to you, actually – ran into Nate Pendleton a couple weeks ago, he asked after you and Edward.”

“I should email him,” Alexander concedes. “We haven’t been much in touch since Columbia.”

He’d blame that fact on not really knowing what to talk to his former teacher about besides academic things, but he knows his own distraction is really at the root of it. After two years working nonstop for his degrees, it was like suddenly discovering New York, the city outside the confines of Columbia, never mind the hectic pace of his work at the _Evening Post._ And not to mention the hours devoted to his since-retired blog as _Publius_.

They keep up idle chitchat while collecting the suitcase, heading upstairs to grab a cab back into the city. Mister Stevens tells him about life back on the island, creeping along with the same relative monotony and mundanity as ever, but then shifts the attention to Alexander once they’re in the quiet confines of the car. “So explain this to me again – did you change jobs, or…?”

“No, I’m still working on the economic team under Vern Morris. And then I liaise with Colonel Mercer at the Pentagon, who was appointed to oversee the beginning stages of an audit that will probably still be going on when I die, so.”

“What does _liaise_ mean, for your purposes?”

He tips his head back against the seat and grins over at his former guardian. “I get a weekly report full of painstaking detail about what’s been done, what’s happening next, what delays there’ll be and how much it’ll all cost. Which I then summarize for the key points to forward on to Lafayette and the chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate Armed Services and Appropriations Committees.”

“Do I want to know how much it all costs?”

“No _p_ e.”

 

While Mister Stevens puts his things in Edward’s room and takes a quick shower after a long day of travel, Alexander orders an obscene amount of Chinese delivery, trusting that a long twelve hours on their feet at the hospital means John and Edward will ensure there are no leftovers to jam up the fridge ahead of tomorrow’s feast prep.

He goes upstairs and changes. Checks his phone again and sees a response from Lucia, just a picture – Raquel home from pre-k, toothy grin and an oversized Ninja Turtle backpack, proudly holding up a hand turkey. 

So he digs out a clean sheet of paper from a desk drawer and traces his own. Manages to track down a black pen, a red pen, and green and yellow highlighters, and makes the most miserably half-scribbled, half-neon bird in the annals of American school children’s hand turkey traditions, and holds the thing up so it’s half-covering his face to snap a picture. 

_To: Lucia H._

_[img]_

_Yours is a lot prettier than mine, Kel._

And this is just – how they do. For now. A shadow of a relationship, the years of tension and resentment with his brother living in this perpetual holding pattern, a peripheral specter hovering on the edge of his sporadic interactions with Lucia. Keeping the line open, as it were, so he might someday make up his mind and either commit to this rekindled effort or shove it aside once and for all.

It doesn’t much help the uptick of anxious nerves in his stomach, knowing that ensconced in the privacy of home now, it’s liable to be the next question out of Mister Stevens’s mouth.

But then on his way back out of the bedroom he gets a text from John letting him know that he and Edward are finally on their way home, so he figures he might as well get it out of the way while they’re still alone. “You can ask,” he proclaims as he flops himself down on the sofa.

Mister Stevens glances up from where he’s sending his own text, probably to Edward. “Hm?”

“James.”

A brow rises slowly. “Do you _want_ me to ask?” Alexander shrugs, eyes fixed at the blank television screen instead of the assessing gaze directed his way. “Are you still in touch?”

“I… sort of? I text his wife, mostly. Occasionally. Holidays, whatever.” He slides is phone across the coffee table, Raquel with her turkey splashed across the screen. “She sends me pictures.”

“That’s really nice of her.” Mister Stevens picks up the phone and studies the image for a moment. When he smiles wistfully, Alexander knows that he can see Rachel Faucette in the little girl just as keenly as he and Edward had at first glance. “She’s cute.”

“I don’t know what to do,” he says as he takes the phone back, obvious as it is. “I don’t want to… drag it out, if it’s just not – that’s not fair. On anyone. But especially not on a little girl who’s going to one day ask why she’s never actually _met_ Tío Alex, you know?”

He gets a pointed look. “Don’t you think that’s something for her parents to worry about?” Another shrug, bordering on sullen. “It was never going to be easy, Alex. James knew that when he showed up asking about you.”

“So what, you think I should just keep up an awkward corresponden-”

“I _think_ ,” Mister Stevens cuts him off gently, “you shouldn’t go hunting for excuses to declare the whole effort a failure. If you decide it’s time to move on, do it for your own sake.”

He accepts the mild rebuke in quiet contemplation. Knows he’d hear the same thing, in essence, from Doctor Hosack, and it occurs that it’s been some time since he made an appointment. The added workload from Mercer keeps him busy.

“I think,” he muses at last, “that it’d have been different if he’d showed up back home. It’s not just the _time_ but – I live in another world now. Been _shaped_ by that world in ways that he’ll never understand and I wouldn’t want him to.”

Which is about as directly as he ever mentions his sordid start in D.C. as a Senate page, these days.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gratuitous use of Cards Against Humanity ahead.

He wakes up pretty reliably at six these days, but it’s the first day off in weeks where he wakes up confident that no one will have sent any emails demanding his attention overnight, and so he resists the impulse to hop right out of bed. Shifts and stretches, steals a quick glance at his phone, and then starts when arms wrap around his waist and a leg curls overtop his own, tugging him backwards.

“Octopus.”

“I have a weekday off,” John mumbles against the back of his neck, and then promptly falls straight back to sleep.

Alexander lets himself drift off again with John’s breath tickling his nape. Settles into a semi-conscious doze that maybe lasts another twenty minutes, and then wriggles free of his boyfriend’s grip and goes back to his phone. Content enough to stay warm and lazy in bed while the silence suggests everyone else is still asleep, too.

Unsurprisingly, it’s a slow news day and, as he’d expected, his inbox is free from any new correspondence. He slides his phone back onto the nightstand and settles for turning over and watching John sleep. There’s the gentlest crease between his brows, the only sign of the last several weeks of a high-stress rotation full of long hours that leave the two of them precious little time to just relax together.

It’s coming up on seven when John finally stirs again, not even a minute after the scent of brewing coffee wafts upstairs and makes Alexander consider escaping the bed at last. “Pavlov’s caffeine addiction,” he murmurs, ducking in to place a gentle kiss on John’s lips. “Should I get you some?”

“Mm, stay. Got nowhere to be.”

“We have a guest. Awake and prowling the kitchen, by the smell.” It’s sure as hell not Edward, who seems to have exactly zero trouble with an inner clock prying him out of bed at unreasonable hours on his days off.

John’s tongue slips into his mouth, teasing. “Tom’s got nowhere to be either.”

“He might want breakfast.”

“Then he can _make_ some.”

“You don’t think we should – _mmph_ ,” he squeaks, undignified, as John takes him by the hips and pulls him close and _ohh_ , okay, so maybe he’s not just angling for a longer lie-in, by the hardness suddenly pressing urgently against his stomach. “Oh. Hi.”

“I can count on one hand the number of times we’ve had sex since I started the internal med rotation.”

Alexander opens and then closes his mouth again, considering. “Well, what about -?”

“Had sex successfully,” he clarifies, and shoves a hand down the front of Alexander’s pants for good measure. “C’mon,” he wheedles, curling his fingers gently around Alexander’s not-wholly-uninterested dick. “Once we go downstairs, that’s it. Company and cooking and cleaning and we’ll be so stuffed and tired by the time we make it back to bed tonight, we won’t even want to.”

A gentle huff of laughter slips from his lips but he reaches for John in turn. Tugs at the waistband of his shorts, thumbs light circles around a prominent hipbone. “You’ve really thought this out.”

“Patient notes were really boring last night, I had time.”

Alexander snorts. “Wow. Romantic.” He urges John over his lap to straddle him and then helps him tug off his t-shirt. “Well, c’mon, Laurens,” he commands, arching his back and stretching his arms up over his head and draping them in the pillows. Going for sultry and probably just looking ridiculous. “Sex me up, then.”

John muffles his laugh in Alexander’s collarbone.

 

x---x

They finally make it downstairs, showered and dressed, around eight, by which point Edward has surfaced, still in sweats and a hoodie, perched on a stool at the counter with a mug clasped tight between his hands and chatting with his father.

“Morning, boys,” Mister Stevens calls from where he’s got his head buried in a cupboard.

Edward scoffs. “ _Morning_? S’practically midday, by their standards.”

The all-too-knowing look he lobs at Alexander suggests their morning absence and simultaneous, freshly-showered appearance was less than subtle.

“Are you looking for something?” John circles the long counter where Alexander takes up a seat by Edward whilst digging an elbow in his side.

“Just taking inventory,” Mister Stevens resurfaces long enough to duck into a neighboring cupboard and hand John a couple of coffee mugs. “I must say,” he adds, pulling a bag of oranges and a box of granola bars from the cabinet with the mugs, “you don’t have a lot of space but you are, uh – _creative_ about how you use it.”

Edward holds up his hands to catch an orange and points out, “We _don’t_ use it, when do you imagine we’d find the time?”

“So, in essence, the kitchen is just oversized coffee storage.”

“Now you’re getting it.”

He lobs a pointed stare over John’s head at the coffee maker straight at Alexander. “At least some things never change.” Alexander raises the mug John passes him in a careful toast. “So, John.” John hops up on the counter by the sink and hums his acknowledgement around a sip from his mug. “First Thanksgiving away from home, or…?”

“Mm,” he shakes his head. “Did undergrad in London.”

“Oh, that’s right.”

“We had nice, long term breaks though, so my parents couldn’t complain too much.” He looks up and catches Alexander’s eye and adds carefully, “We’ve talked about trying to visit Saint Croix during one of the few breaks left before I graduate and my schedule becomes even more hectic and unpredictable with residency.”

Alexander holds in the noisy sigh, but only just. _Talked_ is a generous word for John broaching the subject as they made their Christmas plans for Charleston and getting a noncommittal shrug in return. Maybe he’s just trying to be nice, but Mister Stevens knows Alexander well enough, thankfully, that he just offers a lopsided smile and a shrug that tells him there are zero expectations on that front. “Well, you’re always welcome.”

Edward pitches in with zero tact, distractedly peeling his orange. “John _can’t_ be the last person in the room to realize that the only things that will ever get Alexander back to Saint Croix are a wedding or a funeral.”

“That’s strangely pressuring, Neddy,” Mister Stevens frowns at him, “thank you.”

“I didn’t specify _who_ was being hypothetically celebrated at _which_ ,” Edward winks. 

When John takes his coffee to the couch, a mild flush of embarrassment on his cheeks, Alexander follows and curls up against his side. Knows that this is just – something he’ll never understand entirely. That as much as he feels like he’s moved _on_ from his South Carolina roots, there will still always be an attachment there independent of simply the fact that it’s where most of his family still lives. He can’t understand why the idea of returning to Saint Croix – never mind how dearly he loves Edward and his father – feels like stepping willingly back into a cage he spent years trying to escape in the first place.

 

They put on the parade, and Alexander gets a jolt of nostalgia for his years in New York, his Thanksgivings with the Mulligans. It subsides easily enough as they start bickering over the actual cooking of the meal and Edward’s bafflement at his father’s insistence on organizing the kitchen ahead of making a mess of it all over again.

Once the turkey actually goes _in_ the oven, John draws Alexander out on a walk, just the two of them. They meander lazily down unnaturally empty city streets, hand-in-hand, cheeks pink in the chilly morning air. Their wandering path eventually takes them to a park near the zoo, and it occurs finally that maybe John is feeling the absence of home, the sprawling green expanse of his parents’ property and the ocean so close you can smell it when the wind blows just right.

So they make due with one of the precious nature spaces at hand, and find what looks like every young family in the neighborhood taking advantage of the day off work, the kids out of school. Kids shrieking and laughing at the playgrounds they pass as they stroll up the walking trails, the occasional scooter zipping by, more than a few dogs and John can’t seem to restrain himself from stopping to kneel down and pet each and everyone one that shows an interest in him first.

For about an eighth of a second, Alexander considers suggesting they get a dog, and then he remembers that all of their schedules are atrocious and that would just be cruel.

Maybe a cat. 

He prods John in the arm after he says farewell to the latest iteration of Fido or Fluffy or whatever and asks, “Do you want something small, cute, ungrateful, and standoffish?” 

“I already have you,” John points out and then has to fend himself off of the fingers jabbing relentlessly into his ticklish sides.

He sends a text on the way back to their place. 

_To: Lucia H._

_What’s Raquel’s favorite animal?_

And sees, after they hang up their coats once more: 

_From: Lucia H._

_Today? Turkeys. Any other day of the year? Turtles._

Reasonable.

 

x---x

They eat at midday; fall into a collective sort of food coma, and then Edward and Mister Stevens repeat some iteration of the morning argument about leftovers and cleanup. John disappears upstairs for a half hour to call his family, and when he comes back, Alexander is setting them up to play Cards Against Humanity while they have dessert.

“Oh, dear lord.”

“Shut up, this’ll be fun.”

John looks less than certain of that assertion, and is bright pink in the face even before Mister Stevens draws the first black card to start them off. “So, I just…?”

“Just read it and put it down,” Edward instructs. “And then we each give you a white card to fill in the blank or answer the question, and you pick the best one.”

“Define _best_ ,” Mister Stevens returns drily, before dutifully reading, “ _What left this stain on my couch?_ ”

“Oh my god.” John covers his face with the cards in his hand, while Edward and Alexander each slap down an answer instantly. He recovers just enough to cringingly select a response, and then blushes to the tips of his ears as the answers are read aloud.

Mister Stevens collects the cards and raises a brow. “Ahem,” he clears his throat. “Option one – _multiple orgasms_. Option two – _some of that good dick_. Which I suppose could go hand-in-hand with one another.” Edward cackles at the pinched look on John’s face. “Option three – _a dollop of sour cream_.” He frowns. “Well that one isn’t very funny at all.”

Alexander spearheads round two with _Coming to Broadway this season, ______: the musical_ , and then spends the better part of two minutes trying to decide between _racially-biased SAT questions_ and _independence from Great Britain_.

By the third round and another bout of mortification from John, he finally asks, and John demands right back, “Imagine playing this with _my_ father, Alexander. _Imagine it_.”

He cackles. “Oh my _god_ , can we take this with us to Charleston next month?”

“No.”

“We won’t tell Henry, we’ll play with Harry and Maggie after everyone else is -”

“ _No_.”

 

x---x

Another early alarm the next morning and just like that, it’s back to work for John and Edward. Alexander spends the day with Mister Stevens, and awes him all over again with a trip to the White House, comparatively dark and understaffed as it is. They visit Alexander’s cubicle in the cramped NEC suite downstairs, and then do an abbreviated tour of the rest of the west wing and the Eisenhower Building across the street.

On a whim, as they’re strolling across the park towards the Mall, Alexander asks, “Do you want to see Webster and the Capitol?”

There’s a considering pause while they walk, and Mister Stevens sounds like he’s surprised with his own response when he answers, “I would, actually.”

So they wander their way east, taking meandering detours through all the old war memorials that he visited with Edward when he moved to D.C. two years ago, slowly working their way up the mile and a half towards the Capitol Building. They wind past it on the south side first, until Alexander pauses outside a small, unobtrusive building tucked between the Cannon building and the Library of Congress.

“Well,” he gestures, feeling a bit anticlimactic now that they’re actually looking at the place, also emptied for the holiday weekend, “there it is.” He points. “Boys slept upstairs. We had the corner room around the other side. Common room was…” he mentally traces back the path and then points off to his left, “…second window I think. School was downstairs.”

“At 6:15 in the morning?”

“At 6:15 in the morning.” He turns and points to the catty-corner building. “Library. I used to take homework over there for a change of scenery. And occasionally, to _just happen_ to run into a senator and sit and chat.”

Mister Stevens looks at him while he’s still staring absently across the street towards the library. “We don’t have to talk about it.”

He shrugs. Kicks at the base of the low wall separating Webster’s small courtyard from the sidewalk. “I don’t mind.”

Which may not be entirely true, but he likes the _appearance_ of nonchalance a little too much, and makes a mental note that he really probably ought to schedule with Doctor Hosack once he’s back in his office next week.

“Does your job ever bring you down this way?”

“No _p_ e.”

Which is all he asks until they’re safely ensconced back in the privacy of home. They’re grazing on leftovers and warming up a bit from their brisk morning jaunt when he catches Alexander with a quiet, “Should I be worried about you?”

“Do I seem like you should be worried?” he asks, genuinely curious.

Mister Stevens shrugs. Considers him a moment, openly scrutinizing in a manner he would have carefully avoided in the years Alexander lived under his roof. “You just seem a bit… preoccupied.”

He grins. “Haven’t I always?”

“I’ve seen you twice in five years, Alex, indulge me.”

It’s not said as a rebuke, but a flash of guilt still sparks at his words, recalling the brief and awkward moment with John the morning before. “Does it bother you? That I don’t come back?”

“No,” he sighs. “I’d be happy if you did, but I understand why you don’t. And, to be quite honest,” he adds, “twice in five years is twice _more_ than I expected when you headed to New York. I’m not complaining about the way things turned out.”

He wonders what Mister Stevens sees. What tell he’s inadvertently broadcasting to this visiting spectator on their busy lives. “I’m very happy,” he clarifies to start. “Like- _couldn’t even fathom_ , five years ago, level of happy.”

“But.”

Alexander slumps in a stool at the counter with a weary shrug. “It occurs to me with… practically _alarm_ , from time to time, that it’s been two years since I moved here. In another two there will be an election. In one year, Neddy and John will be applying for residency, will end up God-knows-where six months after that, and I just… I don’t know. It’s dumb.”

“It’s not dumb to worry about what the future holds in store, Alex.”

“I’ve been worrying about my future since I was twelve,” he points out drily, “It’s not that.” Mister Stevens just quirks a brow and gestures for him to continue. “It’s just – we’re inevitably going to lose this. And I’ve known that from day one. But sometimes, it feels like… John and Neddy are going to come out of it as doctors, progressing nicely along in their careers, and I’m just going to be… adrift again.” He sucks in a shaky breath and wipes a hand across his face, suddenly feeling melodramatic and ridiculous. “Sorry. Sorry, it’s just been… a long few weeks since they started this last rotation.”

The look on Mister Stevens’s face suggests to Alexander that he’s settled on _yes_ , he should be worried about him. After a minute of more scrutinizing, he asks, “Are they always on the same schedule?”

“They managed to schedule most of their blocks together. The day-to-day depends who they’re working with in the department.”

“Is it perhaps possible that, in addition to the constant underlying worry about what comes _next_ , you might be feeling a bit left out and jealous?”

“Of twelve hour shifts and patient notes and six-day work-weeks and -”

Mister Stevens sighs in exasperation. “Of the fact that your oldest friend and your boyfriend see far more of one another than they do of you, Alex, you know what I mean.” 

“Well when you put it like that, Jesus Christ, I mean – _yeah_ , I guess?” He quirks a half-smile. “Why, did you hear something? Is John going to leave me for Neddy?” 

He gets a light thwack to the back of the head.

 

x---x

 

Edward has Saturday off and spends the day with Alexander and his dad. John has Sunday, and so he and Alexander make the trek to the airport late in the morning to see Mister Stevens off.

They’re making their way back to the metro platform when his phone rings. He looks at the display and shows it to John, who quirks a brow. “Work on a Sunday? That can’t be good.”

“Hello?”

“ _Alexandre. Why does it sound like you’re standing in a subway station?”_

He glances up at the schedule board; sees they have four minutes until the next yellow train, and turns away to try to shelter the speaker from the breeze. “More of a platform than a station, really. Leaving the airport.”

“ _Oh. Excellent. Come over, we’re having a small gathering before Addy’s family heads home.”_

 Alexander frowns vaguely at the Coast Guard recruitment ad on the wall. “What kind of small gathering?” 

Lafayette laughs at him. “ _Some family, some friends. Some local misfits_.”

“Aw, c’mon, I haven’t agreed yet.”

He moves the phone further from his ear when Lafayette laughs even harder. “ _You are so suspicious_.”

Alexander glances over his shoulder. “It’s John’s day off.”

“ _Bring him along, of course._ ”

John sees him looking and comes to hover closer in earshot. Alexander offers a bemused half-shrug. “Want to go see Addy and the girls?”

John’s eyes light up, and he has his answer.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A party, a warning, and two very different invitations.

The Lafayette house is on a quiet, tree-lined street near Embassy Row, in a neighborhood made otherwise famous by its retired president residents. If he’s not much mistaken, former President Hancock’s home is on the next block. Adrienne is one of the most down-to-earth people Alexander knows, and Lafayette doesn’t exactly exude privilege any more than anyone _else_ who works in federal politics, but on the sporadic occasion he finds himself visiting their home, he’s reminded of Washington’s words when the pair flew quietly to Saint Croix on a chartered private jet.

_Gil is richer than God_.

Someday, he wants that story. It’s certainly nothing to do with his White House salary, or his campaign salary, or his congressional staffer salary before that.

A family member whose face he recalls from their wedding but whose name escapes him utterly lets them in. The house smells like spices and cornbread, and their path in search of the chattering voices from the back of the first floor displays a number of tweaks since their last visit here. Baby gates and outlet covers, and a stray teething toy that John snags off the floor and tosses in the sink when they get to the kitchen.

“Bonjour, y’all.”

The first truly familiar face in the bustling kitchen is not one Alexander anticipated seeing. “Holy shit,” John laughs, stepping forward and drawing his old friend into a one-armed hug. “The prodigal daughter returns. How’s Paris?”

Marty Jefferson leans down to kiss their cheeks primly. “Old. Beautiful. Packed with tourists.” She plants an extra kiss on John’s cheek and grins. “Lot like London, I imagine.”

“City of light? City of _looove_?” John croons.

Marty quickly hushes him. “It’s a bit of a touchy subject right now, shut your face.”

“City of love troubles?” Alexander clarifies, utterly ignoring the _face shutting_ instruction.

Polly appears over her sister’s shoulder, a crab cake in one hand and Virginie propped on her hip with the other. “City of _dad isn’t ready for this shit_ ,” she drawls.

John relieves her of the baby, looking much happier than the last time Alexander saw her, and all the more delighted when she reaches a fat fist up to snag a handful of John’s hair. “Ow.”

“I was wearing earrings when I got here,” Polly offers blandly by way of commiseration. Then she frowns and stares at Alexander for a moment. “Who are you again?”

“Alexander Hamilton,” he introduces himself over the sound of Marty’s groan at her sister’s lack of tact. Polly just gives him a blank stare and a shrug. “I work on the NEC.” More blank staring. “We met at the Lafayettes’ wedding?”

Nothing.

John leans in and gestures between himself and Alexander. “We’re fucking.”

“Oh.” That seems to click something for her. “Nice.”

And she wanders away, exiting the conversation just as abruptly as she’d entered it.

Around mumbled apologies for her sister, Marty turns and leads them to where the bulk of the group seems to have congregated. Despite the chilly November air, people are out on the deck off the breakfast room, some sitting at the table with mugs of coffee or cider clasped between their hands, some leaning against the railing overlooking a small garden and courtyard below.

“Ah,” Lafayette swoops down upon them and wrestles a hat onto Virginie’s head. “Voici, ma petite, il fait froid, non?”

Virginie just howls her indignation and tries to tug the beanie back off.

“Gah.” He throws up his hands in frustration while he watches his daughter fight with the tight garment. “So it goes.”

“I hear they let babies nap outside in the snow in Scandinavia,” John offers consolingly.

Which earns him a cool stare and a finger leveled at his chest. “Try telling that to your overbearing mother-in-law who thinks a full night’s sleep is too long to go without eating, and wipes down the entire play room with antibacterial wipes every five minutes.” 

Alexander pats his arm gently. “Long weekend?” 

“I pray for a national emergency,” he deadpans in return before leaning down to pluck the discarded cap off the ground. “Come. There are hot drinks and snacks in the dining room and a fire in the den.” He steers John and Alexander around, holds an arm out graciously for Marty to precede him back into the house. “You boys look quite windblown enough as is, did you walk all the way from the metro, _merde_ …”

 

In the den, they find the gathering’s undoubtedly most distinguished guest sitting and talking with Adrienne’s brother and father. Alexander nods at him when his eyes sweep slowly over the newcomers, even as Marty plops herself down by his side on the sofa. “Mister Secretary.”

Jefferson glances over at his daughter when she snickers. “Mister Hamilton,” he raises his glass in approximation of a _cheers_. “Mister Laurens.” His eyes drift down over the squirming baby in John’s arms. “Did I miss a happy announcement?”

Alexander doesn’t quite have time to sort out the mixture of amused, perplexed, and horrified that elicits in him before Lafayette is plucking his daughter out of John’s grasp and scowling at his old friend. “Thomas, I am going to assume that is your very, _very_ dry sense of humor rather than believe you still don’t know what my daughter looks like.”

“In fairness, you do have two of them,” Jefferson reasons. Lafayette pouts. “I jest of course. I even know that this one is Virginie, and given her namesake I take great offense to the fact that she does not seem to like me.”

“She doesn’t seem to like much of anyone or anything,” Lafayette admits as he settles on the rug in front of the fire, sitting Virginie down opposite him. “Except her sister.”

The baby in question takes that moment to babble happily, roll over onto her stomach, and start shuffle crawling toward the fireplace. 

“I counted six new gray hairs this week,” Lafayette tells them mournfully.

 

They sit and chat. _Listen_ , more so, running interference for Virginie’s interest in the fireplace while Jefferson regales them with tales of recent travels and diplomatic mishaps, and then engages Adrienne’s father in a deep discussion about his work in some capacity as a medical researcher that reminds Alexander just how damn _smart_ Jefferson actually is behind his disinterested veneer.

Alexander loses the thread of that conversation quickly, but John listens with rapt attention. He finds a lull in the conversation, after Virginie has been whisked away by the well-meaning, if intense, mother-in-law for a nap, and slips away in search of some more coffee.

Along the way, he gets a harried greeting and a quick kiss on the cheek from Adrienne, a wailing and overtired Anastasie tucked under one arm; once he’s armed with his next cup, he heads back out onto the deck and has a far more unexpected encounter.

“Alexander Hamilton.”

He stops and blinks, and then takes a hasty step forward when the door opens again behind him and nearly thwacks him in the back. “Congressman.” He fumbles awkwardly for a moment with his mug and shakes Madison’s hand. “Forgive my surprise, I didn’t realize this was quite your scene.”

Madison grins sharply at him. “Thomas thinks I’m too antisocial.”

“Ahh, so _you’re_ the _local misfit_ Lafayette spoke of.”

“Oh, surely we share in _that_ particular moniker.”

They watch each other for a drawn-out moment; Alexander’s never been quite sure what to do with Madison since the day the congressman showed up on his proverbial doorstep in New York and essentially told him to ensure George Washington served a second presidential term.

Three people in the world know about his old blog; the pseudonym _Publius_. Columbia president John Jay had given him the idea, the thumbs-up of approval, and occasional, careful input when he was stuck on a point; Thomas Conway would never, in a million years, draw attention to _himself_ by using the knowledge of Alexander’s identity for some personal or political goal.

Madison, on the other hand… Alexander never thought to ask just how early on he’d put together Publius’s identity. But so far, he’s the only one who has demonstrated a willingness to use it for his own ends. Even if those ends were ones Alexander wholeheartedly endorsed.

“In truth,” the congressman tells him quietly, “I wondered if I might cross your path here.” Alexander can feel his brows creep up his forehead. “Take a walk with me, Alexander.”

With the quickest of glances at the half-dozen people seated around the patio table, none of whom are paying the pair the slightest bit of mind, Alexander follows Madison down the stairs into the garden. “Why,” he calls after him, “am I having a jolt of déjà vu to an invitation to coffee on a cold December morning three years ago?”

“Because I know too much about you and it makes you nervous.” Points for _blunt_ , anyway. “This,” Madison murmurs as he leads the way into the narrow alley that runs behind all the houses on the street, “is a more personal forewarning.”

He stops walking then, and waits for Madison to notice and turn around to face him. Mug still clenched tightly in both hands, coffee already well on its way to cold. “What is this?”

“Are you familiar with Timothy Bloodworth?”

He casts about in his memory; nothing stands out. “Name rings a bell. North Carolina?”

“Third district. He’s… bandied about as an up-and-coming Dem-Rep leader. Old enough to be established.”

“Young enough to craft a new image as the party tries to recover from the Washington-era losses.”

“Hm. He’s ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee. Which I am on.”

If Madison is expecting some revelation or reaction from that, Alexander is still coming up short. “Um. Congratulations?”

Madison rolls his eyes and turns, continues on his stroll and leaves Alexander to hurry after him. “It’s been six months since Colonel Mercer started staffing his team at the Pentagon. Three months since the first advisories went out to all DoD departments, one month since the first oversight report was produced. Guess how much money has already been spent on an audit that is a fraction of a percent completed?”

“I don’t need to guess, my name is on the report that _told_ you exactly how much money has been spent.”

“So it is.” They reach the end of the alley and turn up the sidewalk of the adjacent street, working their way back towards the front of the house. “And guess how much contractor money is awarded to firms in various committee members’ districts annually?”

The weary sigh escapes him before he can rein it in. He knew this fight was coming, they all did, but everyone anticipated having a bit more _time_. A year, a demonstration of the potential and limits of the audit, before interested parties started lobbying to have it shut down. “I couldn’t say, but I’ll bet it’s a number that _hilariously_ dwarfs the preceding one.” 

“You would be correct.”

“Has anyone considered the optics of having a guy with _blood_ in his name in a prominent position on a military oversight committee?”

Madison continues as if he hadn’t said anything at all. “And you’re smart enough to know that pushback on this whole endeavor is not a strictly partisan measure.”

“Your point?”

Madison glances sidelong at him. “My _point_ is that the Federalist majority is signing off on a Dem-Rep plan to – nominally – exercise a bit of oversight over the process. The committee is reaching out to Colonel Mercer this week in the interests of arranging an interview.”

“Does Colonel Mercer know that?” Madison shakes his head slowly. “Then why are you telling me?”

“Because you can likely expect an invitation to said interview as well.”

Alexander stops walking again. At least Madison expects it that time, turns and stares at him impassively. “Why me? I’m… the middle-man, I’m _nobody_.” 

His lips quirk wryly. “I do believe you’ve just answered your own question.” 

“I don’t -”

“You’re low-hanging fruit, Alexander. Taking potshots against a retired, decorated officer doesn’t score points with anyone’s constituents. Portraying the process as disorganized and inept by lobbing questions at a twenty-two year old kid, no offense, is an easier sell.”

“Only if I can’t answer the questions.”

“Now _that_ , I cannot help you with.”

“So in effect, you’re telling me that Congressional Dem-Reps have it in their heads that making me look like an _idiot_ is the first step in doing away with this whole pesky audit.” Madison hums agreeably. “Did you happen to tell them, per chance, that I’m _not_ an idiot?”

“I did not.”

“I mean, I know I’ve had my moments, but on balance…”

“ _Listen_ to me, Alexander,” Madison glances around and then leans in close. “I have not suggested that you and I are already acquainted because I suspect you have not been keen to draw attention to your _first_ experience working in this city.” He nods slowly. Cautiously. “If you are asked – it doesn’t matter how personal, how _unfair_ , how presumptuous the questions – if you are asked about any prior relationship with Gilbert Lafayette, with the president, that might have had some bearing on your current position, you _cannot lie_. It does not matter how informal an interview – you are an employee of the Executive branch, and you cannot lie to Congress.”

He works his jaw tersely a moment, mulling that over. Mildly peeved at the suggestion he _would_ , he’s not stupid, and would never want to reflect poorly on Washington in such a manner. And yet… “And if I say I was a Senate page in the spring of 2018 and someone asks if I just happened to _fuck a sitting senator_?” 

“No one is going to ask you that. Even Congress is not so craven.”

“You sure about that?”

“No one is going to ask you that,” he repeats. “And it might not come up at all.”

No real answer to that springs to mind. The distraction of his phone vibrating in the back pocket of his jeans splits his attention and spares him a few seconds trying to fathom one. 

_From: John Laurens_

_Where’d you run off to?_

He taps out a quick response and stares at Madison, pursed-lipped. “Well, thank you for the heads-up, Congressman. This was, yet again, oddly cloak-and-dagger. Is there anything else I should know?”

“Well.” Madison leads the way the last few houses to circle back to the front of the Lafayette house. “I can’t say how much he’s studied your resume, but it might be worth noting that Timothy Bloodworth is an old fraternity buddy of John Ashe.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” 

He makes a mental note to call Olivia that night.

 

x---x

 

On Monday during his lunch break, he calls and schedules with Doctor Hosack for an early lunchtime appointment two weeks out.

On Tuesday, he gets an email from Mercer informing him about the outreach from House Armed Services, and an email from Olivia that evening detailing her journalistic impression of Congressman Timothy Bloodworth.

On Wednesday, he has a working lunch with the colonel and Lafayette in the west wing cafeteria.

On Thursday, he receives an invite of his own, by messenger, for an interview scheduled two weeks out, at the exact day and time of his appointment with Doctor Hosack; he can’t decide if the coincidence is humorous or ominous as he calls and reschedules with the doctor for the next day.

And on Friday, he comes home later than Edward and John and finds a rather different sort of invitation sitting on the counter, scrawling calligraphy on a glossy ivory envelope.

“Holy shit,” he plucks the heavy card out of the envelope and reads aloud. “ _Mr. and Mrs. Theodosius Bartow request the pleasure of your company at the wedding of their daughter, Theodosia_ -”

“Who _names_ these people?” Edward calls absently from the sofa where he’s got his laptop open, typing away at tonight’s patient notes.

“ _Theodosia Ann_ ,” he continues, “ _to Aaron Burr, Jr, Saturday the twenty-sixth of April, two thousand twenty-five, at three o’clock in the evening..._ ” 

“S’in Maryland,” John summarizes the rest of it for him, absently skimming his own night’s work at one of the counter stools. “I could probably swing it.”

“Do I get to be your _plus one_?”

John winks up at him. “You know how I feel about your ass in a suit.”

Alexander glances down at his attire. “I wear a suit to work every day.”

“Well, then you know how I feel about your ass every day.”

“Gross,” Edward offers distractedly from the sofa.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Alexander runs his mouth off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heads up for anxiety & panic themes ahead.

He meets Mercer for a drink one day after work the week before their interview with the House Armed Services Committee. The server smiles apologetically and cards him all the same while his companion laughs unsubtly behind his hand. “So, Alexander,” he folds his hands carefully on the tabletop between them when the server disappears again.

“Uh oh.”

“Next week.” He winces. “I assume you’ve never been on the receiving end of a Congressional panel _interview_ that feels more like an _interrogation_?”

“I… have not, no.”

Mercer taps his thumbs absently together. “Are you familiar with the format?”

He thinks back some years to the portions of the Senate Ethics hearings that were televised, and assumes it’s not wholly dissimilar. “Bipartisan back-and-forth Q and A. Majority starts and finishes.”

“Indeed. Now don’t be alarmed -”

“Oh, dear God.”

“-but there are sixty-one congressmen on the Armed Services Committee.”

Alexander can _feel_ his eyes go comically wide. “Uh.”

“They won’t all be there. Some will be occupied on other committees, some simply won’t care. The ones who _do_ attend won’t all ask questions. But it’s a setup designed to intimidate, and the only difference between our _interview_ and a formal hearing is that there will be no sort of swearing in. Technically, it’s an information-gathering exercise, not a probe of wrongdoing. Which is important to remember, when questions get pointed, when questions are _designed_ to make you defensive.”

“Keep my cool, is what you’re saying.”

Mercer shoots him a look, and unfolds his hands from the table as their server reappears with their drinks. Alexander takes a careful sip of his jack and coke and waits for him to respond. “Answer the question you are _asked_ ,” he elaborates once she’s gone again. “Be succinct, be courteous, and be _honest_.”

He can’t help but wonder if it’s something about being twenty-two, or just something about _him_ particularly, that makes everyone think he’s going to do or say something phenomenally stupid next week. “I crunch numbers,” he offers with a shrug. “What am I going to say?”

“I don’t know,” Mercer fires right back around a slow sip of his long island. “But I assume someone’s dragging you into this for a reason.”

Which is when it first occurs to him to wonder if there’s not more going on than simply money and politics; when it occurs to him that maybe he ought to be looking at everybody _else_ on the committee, and not just Bloodworth, but a week is hardly enough time to familiarize himself with the backgrounds of sixty additional congresspeople.

“Alexander?”

“Hm,” he snaps his absently wandering gaze back across the table. “Sir?”

“I asked if you know anyone on the committee.”

“Just James Madison. He still worked for Secretary Jefferson when I was a page.”

He has the briefest impulse, then, to come clean. Mercer wouldn’t care, and he already knows Alexander served a term as a page because that’s how Washington introduced them. But Madison’s assurance wins out, regardless of his skepticism – _no one is going to ask you that_ – and he cannot overcome the deeply engrained instinct, honed over more than six years now, to protect that secret.

And regardless, it wouldn’t get him out of this damned summons – because that’s what it really is, cloaked in flowery language. 

So with the rising sense that something is not right – something more than what Madison knew, or at least what he revealed – he sets his sights to preparing. Takes Madison’s warning and Mercer’s advice to heart, and figures that if it comes down to it, the best way to avoid finding himself on the defensive is to have an effective offense at the ready.

 

x---x

When John comes home that Saturday evening and finds Alexander obsessively bouncing between _both_ of their open laptops at the desk in their bedroom for the third night in a row, he brings his hands up to knead gently into Alexander’s shoulders and murmurs quietly in his ear, “Are you _sure_ you don’t want me to see about swapping my days off so I can come with you?”

It’s tempting, in its way; he worries it could send the wrong sort of message, just at the moment when he’s trying to prove himself as competent and qualified, to bring his boyfriend along who just so happens to be the son of the former Speaker of the House.

He fills in another row on his open spreadsheet, saves his work, and tips his head back for a kiss. “I’ll be alright. And besides – _mm_ ,” he ducks around another kiss with a grin, “I wouldn’t want to risk screwing up our flight.”

“ _Oh_ , two whole weeks with no pre-dawn rounds, no overnight shifts, no alarms…”

“Yes, two whole weeks, and we’re spending one of them at your _parents’_ house, do you see where we’ve gone wrong?”

John pulls him up with a laugh and tugs him towards the bed. Fingers pulling at Alexander’s already-loose tie as they go, John’s discarded somewhere already between the front door and the bedroom. “We’ll make do.”

“You won’t play _Cards Against Humanity_ with your dad even in the same house, but you want to have sex in your high school bedroom right down the hall.”

“My high school bedroom has a lock on the door; _nothing_ is worth the risk of having to explain to a family member just what _bukkake_ means.”

Which… is totally fair.

He lets John strip him down. Watches as his boyfriend shucks his own shirt and pants, and then carefully hangs up all of their discarded vestments, and there’s an abrupt bit of whiplash from a sense of floundering while John pushes ahead in life, to wondering when they both got so damn _old_ , shirts and ties, and careful creases in their slacks.

They make their way into the bathroom and a hot shower. More of John’s nightly ritual than his own, after long days surrounded by the antiseptic smells of the hospital (and God knew what else), but he wills the hot spray to ease some of the tension from his shoulders.

It doesn’t pull his mind out of his work though, and he’s mentally running through blank spots on his spreadsheets when John’s chuckled, “Alright, move it, you’re hogging all the hot water,” startles him back into the moment.

He shuffles, trades places, and just feels… unsettled. Unsettled enough to bat John’s slick, soapy hand away when he absently wraps it around one hip and pulls Alexander back into his chest, open-mouthed, sucking kisses at the base of his neck.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, twisting in John’s hold and tucking his face in his neck. “Sorry, I just – m’not in the mood.”

“Are you not in the mood,” he can hear the grin in John’s voice, “or is your head stuck at your desk?”

“Explain to me,” he snaps, pulling back, “how those two things are mutually exclusive.”

“Whoa.” He hates the soft concern in John’s eyes as he rakes them over Alexander’s form. “Sorry, I didn’t – mean anything by it.”

“I know,” he sighs, reaching out the side of the curtain for a towel anyway.

“Hey…”

But he flees, toweling off quickly and feeling hot in a way that has nothing to do with the steaming shower and bothered in a way that has nothing to do with John’s absent-minded advances. The guilt of dashing off means that he can’t focus on digging back into his work anyway, though, so he sighs and opens his arms, a question, an offer, when John resurfaces a few minutes later with a towel around his waist.

He steps close to the chair and accepts the embrace. Hands slow and cautious where they wind around Alexander’s shoulders. “I think,” Alexander tells him, cheek pressed into the warm flesh of his stomach just above the towel, “Madison’s little advance warning, while well-intentioned, is just making me see specters around every corner.” John rubs gentle circles into his back. “Mercer said something when we met up the other day that got under my skin, and now I just.”

He pauses. Doesn’t know how to finish that sentence. Can’t promise to be more _here_ , in the moment, not until after this damned thing is done with. 

“I’m okay,” he settles on eventually. “I just need to get through Wednesday.”

 

x---x

Wednesday, as it turns out, starts out with a spectacular level of dullness. He arrives at work a bit before eight and gets a solid two hours of his usual NEC work in for Morris. Mercer shows up at ten, has a brief chat with Lafayette upstairs, and then collects Alexander and his assembled notes to get in a car and head over to the Hill.

Alexander catches himself fidgeting as they’re let out in front of the Rayburn building. The thought that at least it’s a _House_ hearing, on the opposite side of the Hill from where most of his work took place six years ago, kept his composure in check these past two weeks. But the similarities are too pervasive, too overwhelming to the senses as he steps through the expedited security line and into the lobby.

It’s his first time actually _inside_ one of the Congressional office buildings since the day he punched James Reynolds in the nose and got unceremoniously dragged back to Washington’s office and handed a flight itinerary back to the Virgin Islands.

Since the day, two weeks after he’d cut things off with Thomas Conway, that he realized Benedict Arnold in Washington’s office and John André in Jefferson’s had known all along about the illicit affair they’d been conducting for more than a month before _that_.

Since the day he decided that trying to stop it from happening again was more important than his desperate desire to keep their indiscretions a secret.

He is very suddenly, starkly certain that he does not want to be here.

“Little late for that,” Mercer chuckles at his side and _oh_ , great, he said that out loud.

They go up to one of the big hearing rooms on the second floor. A young man meets them at the door and ushers them past the sparsely occupied spectator and press chairs to the long tables in the front where name placards have already been set up, facing the semi-circled, stair-step array of committee members’ chairs, maybe a third of which are already occupied.

“Colonel Mercer, you’re right here,” the man gestures him to the chair where the _Col. Hugh Mercer, USA, ret._ placard is set. “Your aide can sit in the row straight behind you, if you like.”

Alexander blinks, and enjoys the bemused glance Mercer sends his way. The awkward humor of the moment at least serves to pull him back into it a bit more and, holding their hapless guide’s gaze steadily, he slowly maneuvers himself into the chair labeled _Mr. Alexander Hamilton, NEC_.

“Um,” he stammers. “Sorry.” And he dashes back off.

Mercer checks that their table-top microphones are off before reaching over to pour them both a glass of water from the pitcher already sitting in between them. “You gonna be okay, kid?”

“Um.” He sees Madison slip in through one of the side doors and make his way up towards the top of the chamber, further away from their table. On the lower-end of the seniority totem pole. “Is this a bad time to mention that I got _expelled_ as a Senate page for punching one of James Monroe’s interns?”

“A little bit, yes,” Mercer informs him drily, and then stands right back up, nudges him to do the same, and extends a hand towards an older congressman headed their way. “Congressman Ames.”

_Fisher Ames_ , Alexander’s memory supplies from his long hours of preparation. _Committee chair, Federalist – Massachusetts 7 th_.

“Good to see you again, Hugh,” Ames smiles with something that might even be sincerity. “And – ah, Mister Hamilton.” They shake hands. “How is it that six months of seeing your name come across my desk and we are only just meeting face-to-face?”

“Oh, I’m really just a glorified messenger, sir,” Alexander answers, when it becomes apparent that an answer is expected.

Ames studies him through narrowed eyes for a moment, before shrugging. “Well, hopefully you won’t be too bored listening to us old men drone on today.”

He just blinks. “I am… at your disposal, Congressman.”

And, okay, he’s a little confused as proceedings start fifteen minutes later, because as far as he can tell no one is even particularly interested in his presence. The ranking member, Bloodworth, doesn’t even pose any questions to him once Ames has finished his opening remarks.

So he gives the obligatory introduction spiel, consciously ignoring the standard C-SPAN cameras, and then sits back and listens for the better part of an hour and a half while the committee members take turns lobbing questions at Mercer about budgets and funding, and military readiness and inconvenience. On occasion, he finds a figure for Mercer or jots notes when their examiners talk themselves into confusing circles, but he may as well just be the colonel’s aide after all, for all the purpose he has here today.

Which makes it more than a little startling when a congressman on the Dem-Rep side directs the whole chamber’s attention to him.

“Mister Hamilton.” He blinks up in surprise. “We haven’t heard yet from you.”

Which feels a little bit like a trick question. “You haven’t asked me any questions,” he points out reasonably.

“The reason for that,” the man muses, “is likely that no one in this room is quite sure why you are even here.”

A couple of heads turn. Alexander very carefully avoids looking to Madison in his confusion. “To be entirely fair, Congressman, I’m not quite sure why I’m here, either.” A smattering of chuckles. “But I was invited, and so I came.”

“You misunderstand me, Mister Hamilton.” His brows raise, curious. Impatient. “You are in this room because you were summoned.” Finally, someone willing to acknowledge that part out loud. “What I fail to comprehend is your role in this endeavor at all. You work for the NEC, do you not?”

“As I stated during opening introductions, I am a member of Director Morris’s policy analysis staff.”

“Do you understand why some of us might have concerns that someone involved in crafting economic policy is collaborating on a nonpartisan, neutral audit of the Defense Department on the side.”

“I…” he looks around, then. Sees a mixture of curiosity and perplexity on the expressions of the other committee members. “Forgive me, I can’t see your placard from here - Congressman Eacker, was it? New York second?” Eacker smiles an oily smile and nods once. “Congressman Eacker, I think that’s a generous description of my role within the NEC, which is fiscal data analysis for the people who _do_ advise the president in the crafting of economic policy.” Mercer clears his throat. A note of caution. “Nor am I _collaborating_ on any functional aspect of the audit itself.”

“Then what exactly _is_ your role, Mister Hamilton?”

“The report that this committee receives, and its counterpart in the Senate, as well as the Appropriations committees and the White House chief of staff? Those pages are compressed from an extraordinary amount of data generated by the team at the Pentagon and the accounting firms that have been contracted to do much of the legwork around the country and, indeed, the world. _My_ role is to sort through that data, compile an executive summary for the Chief of Staff and Congress, and be available for any basic requests for further detail instead of burdening Colonel Mercer’s team with inquiries from the White House.”

He pauses, and then adds, “You are more than welcome to forward any clarifications to my desk as well, Congressman. I can include that offer in my next report.”

Ames smiles down at his desk, and even Bloodworth looks faintly amused. Mercer just sighs noisily and takes a sip of water.

Eacker does _not_ look amused, and he tacks on, “Perhaps, then, I ought be asking about your salary working under Director Morris, since it sounds like a large portion of the work you’re actually doing is as an auxiliary to Colonel Mercer.”

“Now that _is_ a good question,” he fires back before he can stop himself, “because if there’s one thing I’ve gathered in the past few months sifting through the numbers, it’s that I’d be making a hell of a lot more money getting paid as a DoD contractor instead of a federal employee.”

Mercer puts his hand over the microphone and hisses at him, “You would do well to _stop talking_ right about now, Alexander.”

He can’t. Two weeks of worrying about this, of analyzing every bit of information he could find about the ranking member, only to have the attack come from an entirely different quarter – he feels like he’s vibrating out of his skin, blood rushing in his ears. “I’ve sat here and listened for more than an hour while you grill Colonel Mercer about the outrageous cost of accounting for the DoD’s, frankly, _obscene_ budget. Somewhere in the eight hundred million range for one year, by current estimates?” He flips through tabs in his portfolio and slams it open to the pertinent page. “Does the number eleven billion, six-hundred and fourteen million mean anything to you, Congressman Eacker?”

“I can’t say that it does.”

“That’s the value of Department of Defense contracts awarded to firms headquartered in your district in the last fiscal year alone. Try another _fifty_ billion to firms whose CEOs have vacation houses in your corner of Long Island. And this committee is objecting to eight hundred million to ensure some accountability and efficiency as to where all those billions are _going_?”

The room becomes very still and very quiet.

Eacker gets a very sharp gleam in his eye.

“Okay,” Ames taps his desk. “I think you’ve made your point, Mister Hamilton, why don’t we -”

“You’re very thorough, Mister Hamilton,” Eacker interrupts him quietly. “Are you an accountant?”

“No, sir.”

“Did you serve in the military?”

“No, I did not.”

“You are, in fact, just twenty-two years old.”

There’s a moment’s pause while he frowns and waits for any further commentary. “I’m sorry, was that a question or a complaint?”

Movement catches the corner of his eye, and he finally glances towards Madison and sees that he’s got his head in one hand, shaking it slowly back and forth. “Simply an observation,” Eacker draws his gaze back. “Twenty-two year-olds aren’t generally appointed to the president’s economic advisory council.”

“I’m… _not_ a council appointee and I’m not a presidential advisor,” Alexander clarifies, again, slowly, “I’m an analyst on Director Morris’s staff.” Pause. “And I started that position at twenty, not twenty-two.”

That at least finally earns Bloodworth’s attention and he frowns down at his own notes. “You have a degree, do you not, Mister Hamilton?”

“Two of them, in fact. Is this relevant?”

“A bit unusual, to be sure,” Bloodworth murmurs as he skims the page in front of him.

“It’s professional malpractice,” Eacker bites, and both Ames and Bloodworth whip around and give him a quelling look. “I appreciate that Washington’s spent two decades honing the art of _bucking the trend_ in this town, but this is too far.”

Dragging Washington into matters rouses the spirits of the room a bit, finally. Alexander ignores the rising commotion, Ames’s attempts to restore order, and asks calmly into the microphone, “Is there a specific, _concrete_ complaint about my job performance, or…?”

“The White House has put someone who isn’t an economist with the NEC, and someone who isn’t an accountant as their point man for an audit that the administration has been touting to be _of the utmost importance_ since the day Washington took the oath!”

“Congressman Eacker -” Ames starts.

Alexander cuts him off. “I spent my last six months at Columbia working with Thomas Paine, who spent several years as Senator Paterson’s economic policy advisor, assisting his research on the intersection of sector deregulation and economic flexibility with labor inequality and stagnant wages. That, in addition to my actual coursework, mind you.”

“Mister Hamilton -”

“Then, for about a year _after_ I graduated, I worked for the _New York Evening Post_ as part of Olivia Wolcott’s research team for her investigative series that eventually put one of your colleagues behind bars, obliged the resignation of a senator, and earned, by my count, seven formal reprimands from the Office of Government Ethics to people _in this room_ today.

“I am not an accountant,” he concludes quietly as the room goes eerily still once more. “I am, however, _very_ keen on government accountability, Congressman.” 

Ames smacks a gavel on his desk that Alexander hadn’t even realized he had. “ _Again_ , Mister Hamilton, I believe your point has been well-made. Congressman Eacker, your time is _long_ expired.” He puts a hand over his mic and leans in to talk to Bloodworth for a moment, harsh whispers and shaking heads. “If there are no objections from the committee, I think we’re done here for today. We can reconvene this interview after the recess.”

 

“Well,” Mercer mutters under his breath as he ushers him out two minutes later, “they’re certainly afraid of you now.”

He can feel the hot stares at their backs as they leave the hearing room. The polite disinterest in his presence vanished in the wake of that spectacle as he barreled on past every warning Mercer gave him in advance of this sit-down. As he took his determination to avoid becoming defensive by going on the offense so far that he may as well have declared war on the whole committee.

But it’s when a photographer snaps a picture of them exiting the room – just one, on paper this event was hardly of enough interest to merit a press gaggle – that the full weight of what he’s done slams into him. What he’s risking in showing off, with his smart mouth, what’s at stake. The peacefulness of his relative obscurity, content to be surrounded by numbers in a cramped cubicle in the west wing basement, and –

\- somehow, he makes it back downstairs and into the waiting car.

By the time they’re underway, he recognizes the inevitability of the oncoming panic attack. By the time Mercer gets Lafayette on the phone, he’s digging into old techniques Doctor Kortright used to run him through to keep his breathing slowed and spaced out, and there’s a certain other-worldliness to the sounds around him.

A vague understanding that Mercer sounds resigned, amused, and frustrated by turns, but his brain isn’t processing the words, and it’s not until Mercer says his name a second time, phone held across to him, that he realizes he’s being addressed.

“What?” he gasps, losing the thread of his counting.

_One, two, three, four_ … “Gil wants to talk to you.”

… _seven, eight nine_ … “I can’t.”

“What do you _mean_ , you…?” Mercer shifts in his seat to get a better look at him, and the scrutiny spikes everything up a notch, a strange combination of foggy detachment and the mortification at doing this now, doing this _here_. The forced mantra, having lost the thread of his calming attempts, that this feeling will pass, just like every other time, but never once has that mantra succeeded in seeing him through an attack without the creeping fear that _this_ time is different, that this time his heart can’t possibly withstand the strain of its pounding, the crushing weight on his chest. “Gil, I’m going to call you ba-”

“Wait,” Alexander releases a ragged breath, the word coming out half-gasp and half-sob. “I need – my desk -”

“Meds?”

He nods quickly, trembling hands curling into the leather seat.

“Gil, we’re going to be coming up the drive in about five, can you find someone downstairs to look for a prescription in Alexander’s desk and run it up to the car?” There’s a pause, and then Mercer answers quietly, “Panic attack, I think.”

When he hangs up the call, Mercer takes charge as best in can, in the narrow confines of the backseat of the car. There’s an air to him that suggests it’s more habit than hypothetical, which is at least a tiny reassurance Alexander manages to cling to around his new mental refrain of _five minutes, five minutes, just five minutes…_

“Your heart’s not gonna explode and your lungs aren’t gonna collapse. You’re certainly not going to die.” He manages a huff of shaky laughter and puts his face in his hands. “Don’t do that, now, sit up and try to keep your breaths deeper.”

His palms come away damp with sweat and tears. He presses them into the fabric of his pants and thumps his head back against the headrest.

“Can you loosen your tie? Maybe unbutton your collar?”

Clinging to the man’s voice as he is, his hands move automatically to comply like he’s been given an order. He aborts the effort just as quickly when his shaking hands fumble with the knot.

“Can I help you?" 

He whips his head back and forth and spends the rest of the ride curled over in the seat with his hands fisted in his hair, sucking in great gasps of air and feeling like he’s suffocating.

 

It feels like an eternity; rationally, he knows it’s only a few minutes before the car door is opening and Lafayette is standing there with a white pharmacy bag in one hand, big block sharpie letters in Alexander’s hand that say **Break Glass In Case of Emergency** , a water bottle tucked under his elbow, and a tiny white pill resting in his other palm. “Voici.”

Alexander shakes his head. Gestures to the bag. “Une autre.”

“Euhhh…” He fumbles with his armful, passes the water to Mercer, and pulls the box out of the bag to double-check the label. “I’m not sure that’s…”

“He doesn’t want two,” Mercer cuts in, “he wants to see you open it.”

“ _Oh_. Merde, d’accord.”

So he drops the first pill into the bag and slides the sheet of perforated squares from the box; pops another one through the foil, two empty pockets in an otherwise full packet, and passes it carefully into Alexander’s unsteady grip.

He swallows it dry, and then accepts the water from Mercer. Lets his head thump back against the leather again, and wills the placebo effect of simply having swallowed the thing start easing him down incrementally long before the drugs can work their way into his system.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Until further notice, posting plan will be Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday updates.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> anxiety themes, cont'd

Alexander wakes up feeling hungover. Pain building at the base of his skull, stomach unsettled. Mouth and throat dry, and everything just a bit off-kilter. 

More alarmingly, he wakes up in a room he does not recognize and with no immediate recollection as to how he got there.

The sound of a shrieking ten-month-old pulls him from the brink of the rebounding anxiety and he settles back with a soft groan, exhaustion and fuzziness warring with the anticipation of the inevitable awkward of extracting himself from the Lafayette house. It slowly comes back to him, and the sluggishness of his recall is precisely _why_ he hates the damn pills.

Unwilling to call John to pull him from the hospital to come take him home, and Lafayette unwilling to send him off to an empty house for hours on end, such was the compromise: dumping him at home with a baffled Adrienne so he could sleep off the bone-weary exhaustion of the attack itself and the less-than-gentle sedative effect of the alprazolam.

He spies his phone on the bedside table and lunges for it. _6:13_. A message from John just before three asking how things were going, but nothing since, which is a pretty good indicator that it’s been a busy day and he ought not expect him until closer to nine.

Still. By his rough estimation, he’s been here in the vicinity of four hours, which seems quite enough time to crash at his friends’ place like the party guest who had too much. So he forces himself upright and swings his feet over the side of the bed, ignoring the escalating pounding in his head at the change in angle and elevation. Once he recovers his bearings a bit, he forces himself to stare at his phone long enough to tap out a quick reply to John. 

_To: John Laurens_

_Could have been better. Tell you tonight. Heading home soon._

Alexander drags himself into the attached bathroom, because the Lafayette house is so big that even the guest rooms have en suites, and pees, splashes some water on his face. Ignores the tumbler that looks more antique than functional and gulps water straight from his cupped hand, which takes the edge off his fogginess and leaves him feeling more burned out than anything.

Head a bit cleared, he registers his jacket hanging on one of the bedposts, tie laid on the writing desk in the corner. His shoes on the chest at the foot of the bed, and he sits heavily as he pulls them back on.

Tie shoved in his pocket and jacket draped over his arm, he leaves the room and immediately smells dinner in the works. He makes his way down the stairs, manages to climb over the baby gate at the bottom without breaking his neck or knocking it over, which feels like his biggest accomplishment all day, and follows the sounds of the girls’ babbles the rest of the way to the dining room.

He is _not_ expecting to find Lafayette there, home from work already and looking like he just walked in the door in time to pick up a spoonful of baby yogurt. “Dinner?” he asks casually when he sees Alexander hovering just outside the doorway.

His face goes hot, and he shakes his head. Doesn’t think his stomach would tolerate anything right now anyway, and this is just… another one of those futile things. The effort to convince himself, to let Doctor Kortright, or Doctor Beekman, or Doctor Hosack convince him that the inevitable shame is unfounded, the self-recrimination that always comes from the feeling of having utterly lost control.

“Oh, honey.” Adrienne shoves her utensil in her husband’s hand, leaves him juggling both girls’ dinner while she comes over and folds him in a tight hug. His shoulders slump and he lets his nose press into her dark hair, which smells like coconut with subtle undertones of Cheerio dust.

“I’m alright,” he mumbles against her shoulder. “Just need to go home.”

Adrienne can have a bit of a tendency to mother him and John and, even on occasion, Edward; it’s a testament to how damn _loud_ his body language must speak, rigid posture, the fragile thread holding his defensive prickliness at bay, that she doesn’t press the matter. “At least let one of us drive you.”

He doesn’t bother fighting it. “I imagine your husband would like the opportunity to yell at me, so may as well.” 

Lafayette goes wide-eyed at Adrienne’s stare and holds up a hand and vows, “No yelling. I promise.” But he does also dump a handful of crackers apiece on the girls’ high chair trays before promptly standing up and casting about for his keys, so Alexander assumes he wasn’t terribly far from the mark. 

He says goodbye and thanks Adrienne, kisses the girls on the head and dodges a yogurt-covered hand from Anastasie grasping for him. “Chicken’s done in twenty,” Adrienne reminds her husband as they make for the door, and gets a solemn vow that he won’t dally.

It’s not until they hit the first stoplight on Massachusetts that Lafayette asks quietly, “Can we talk about it?”

“Would you let me get away with saying _no_ if I tried?” He gets a dry look at that. “There’s a _mild_ bit of hilarity that I’d just like someone to appreciate, which is that I had to reschedule an appointment with my shrink to accommodate the interview this afternoon.” He pauses, and adds, “On a related note, I’ll be out of the office late tomorrow morning for a long lunch.”

His attempt at humor falls flat, by the contemplative frown playing across the older man’s face, but he gets it. It’s a delicate conversation on a personal level, and the professional dynamic only complicates it exponentially. "I'm trying to ask you if something _happened_ , Alexandre. I know it doesn’t have to be… that straightforward. L’anxiété. But… Hugh, George, myself, we all used to work a job where getting shot at was par for the course, so I know that sometimes it _is_.”

“Nothing happened.” He stares out the passenger window blankly, barely registering the passing streetlights, Christmas decorations. “I just… worked myself up over it. Lost any semblance of chill, and then came away with this sense that I’d just… made a completely irrevocable mistake. I spiraled.”

Lafayette hums, noncommittal. “Irrevocable, non. Though I trust you understand why the suggestion that the White House is approaching the DoD audit with an underlying assumption of Congressional corruption is one that will need to be… _delicately_ walked back.”

He doesn’t bother correcting him; doesn’t explain that it was not the _professional_ considerations preoccupying him at all. “Yeah.”

“The timing is also to our advantage. Congress is about to recess for the holidays, the media will be occupied with the swearing-in of the new class in January.”

“Okay.”

A minute passes in silence. Alexander can _hear_ Lafayette struggling to work his mind and mouth around what he wants to ask, but he’s not much in the mood to make it easier so he waits him out. “From a point of purely personal concern, as I think asking about my subordinate’s medical information is somewhat frowned upon…”

Which at least earns a chuckle. “I won’t tell on you.”

“I assume, as you _have_ the Xanax, that wasn’t the first time that’s happened.” He shakes his head. “The date on the prescription was almost a year ago, and the box was unopened. Given how hard that dose knocked you on your ass…”

“I’ve had them since the end of high school; think I’ve taken a half dozen in all that time. S’been almost two years since I’ve needed one.” And he confesses, “I used to keep a couple in my wallet. Never bothered when the last batch expired.”

“Will you again?”

“Yeah,” he sighs heavily. And the question he’s really dreading: “What did you tell the president?”

“That I deemed it _prudent_ to keep you out of the office the rest of the day.” Alexander turns sharply to look at him and gets a tight smile. “There is an art, Alexandre, not just to the management of information in and out of the Oval Office, but to the _presentation_ of it.” Which is a fancy way of saying _lie without actually lying_ , Alexander supposes. He does _not_ tell Lafayette how much he sounds like John André then. “And when it comes to _you_ , my friend…”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Lafayette glances at him sidelong, brows raised. “It means he would become distracted by guilt that is not merited, and that guilt would make you just as prickly as you are presently, and I think berating unsuspecting congressmen is quite enough excitement for you this week.”

“Why should he feel guilty?”

His question is met with silence. At the next stoplight, Lafayette just stares at him for a long moment, frustration and compassion warring behind his eyes. “You’ve lived here and worked here for two years. Hugh informed me two weeks ago that you were accompanying him to the Hill today, and somewhere along the way I mentioned the interview had been scheduled to the president, and it never occurred to either of us to ask – have you _been_ back to the Hill since you were sixteen?”

“I’m not afraid of Capitol Hill, for God’s sake.” But he concedes, “No, I haven’t. Hadn’t.”

“Well. The president would feel guilty. That no one thought to ask.”

“Believe it or not, my neuroses aren’t exclusively rooted in the dumbass things I did at sixteen. And the president has vastly more important things to worry about.”

Lafayette chuckles. “Yes, he does. Anyway,” they turn onto Alexander’s narrow and crowded one-way street, “Hugh thought, retrospectively, that you were perhaps upset before proceedings even began.”

“I wasn’t up-”

“Something about James Monroe’s intern?”

He snaps his mouth closed and rubs wearily at his eyes. Lets out a protracted, noisy sigh. “I forgot entirely about that. I probably don’t even want to know what I said _after_ I took the drugs.”

“You mostly just looked at me with an expression suggesting we’d met once, in passing, and you were trying desperately to conjure my name from the depths of your memory.”

They find an undersized space into which Lafayette manages to angle his car just far enough to let the vehicles behind them squeeze past. “Sorry for losing my cool.” Lafayette just waves him off. “Who is that asshole, anyway?”

“Eacker?” He nods. “Je sais pas.”

Which means that his need to collapse back into bed will compete with the pull to research any and everything he can find about the congressman. “Thanks for the lift. And the nap.”

“Call one of us if you need anything, d’accord?”

“Yeah, alright.”

He ducks out of the car with relief; not just to escape the conversation, but the stop and go of D.C. traffic, still well within the after-work rush, did no great wonders for his unsettled stomach. Inside, he stares reluctantly at the bowl of questionably palatable fruit, testament to John’s sporadic attempts to pretend they don’t all still eat like they live in undergrad dorms. Rooting through until he finds an acceptable apple, he carries it over to the couch, plops it down on the table, and then snags the bunched-up blanket from the floor and cocoons himself in it while he kicks off his shoes.

 

He next wakes up feeling like he got hit with a car instead of a truck, and with Edward’s face six inches from his own, looming over the back of the couch. “Jesus _fucking_ Christ.”

“Your phone’s ringing.”

Without bothering to move, he just closes his eyes again and holds out his hand; waits for Edward to slide the offending device into his grasp, punches the screen blindly, and brings it up to his ear. “’lo?”

“ _Well you sound awful._ ”

“Xanax hangover.” And then the voice of his caller catches up to him. “Oh, son of a _bitch_.”

“ _Sounds like today went_ great _._ ” He groans. “ _Want to tell me why some kid from fucking_ Buzzfeed _is, quote,_ calling to confirm Alexander Hamilton used to work with you _, end quote_.”

“Mistakes were made.”

“ _You run your mouth off_?”

Olivia knows him too well. “You know me too well.”

“ _Well. I confirmed you did, indeed, work here. Said I’d get back with any further commentary_.”

“Ohh, I think it’s probably best to deprive this one of oxygen and let it die.”

“ _You realize I’m_ totally _going to watch every gruesome minute when it drops on the_ C-SPAN _site tomorrow_.”

_Jesus_. “Your unfailing support is always appreciated.”

She snorts. “ _Alright. Settle your hangover. Catch you later, kid_.”

The call disconnects with a beep. He holds it blindly back up in the air, content to be waited upon, and then recoils violently into the back of the couch when fingers touch his cheek instead. “Wh- oh.” John’s expression is painfully concerned, eyes wide and discerning from where he’s kneeling next to the sofa. “You’re home.” Brows furrow, and logic catches up with him a few minutes too late. “Right. Neddy’s here. You always come home together.”

“When did you take the Xanax?”

“Long enough ago that this is the hangover haze, not the happy haze.”

The myriad emotions that flicker across John’s face pass too quickly for him to pick out, in his groggy state. But he gets enough of the gist to realize that maybe he didn’t think this through too well before John asks, “So where were you when you told me two hours ago you were heading home soon?”

The insistence that they _not_ call John made more sense in his post-panic, still-wired haze. “I crashed at Addy’s.”

“You didn’t think that maybe -?”

“You’ve seen me on Xanax, John, I wasn’t doing much thinking at all,” he snaps as he shuffles up on his elbows, trying to lever himself more upright.

A throat clears, and he peers over the back of the couch again with the abrupt recollection that Edward is, in fact, still there as well. “Hey. Hi. Are you two gonna fight? Should I go? Should I pick a side?”

“No,” Alexander grouses, “you always side with John.”

“Neither of us would ever win in an argument against you if we didn’t team up.” Alexander fishes around for something soft to lob at Edward’s head and, for the first time in his life, understands the utility of throw pillows when he comes up empty. Edward’s lips quirk, like he can see the impulse in his eyes, and he pockets his phone. “But for the record,” he pauses before heading down the short hallway that leads to his bedroom, “I’m on the side of _Alex hates his meds and only takes them in event of dire emergency, so let’s not yell at the guy who probably feels like shit_.” His brows rise slowly, and he glances just once between Alexander and John before turning around and disappearing. “But that’s just me.”

There’s an awkward pause in his wake. “Holy shit,” John says, eyes still fixed on the spot where Edward vanished. “I think I just got _big brothered_.”

“I think that’s the first time he’s come down on my side since I was nine.”

Which isn’t true, at all, but it breaks a bit of the weary tension between them. John presses his face into Alexander’s collarbone and lets out a slow, heavy breath. “Come upstairs?”

Suddenly very cognizant of how gross he feels – two naps in his work clothes, sweating under the blanket that got tangled around his waist sometime while he slept, mouth dry and bitter-tasting – he agrees. Lets John fetch him some water and a granola bar and fuss over him in the wake of Edward’s pointed words, and he even gets away without talking much about it given everyone’s exhaustion and his reminder that he has an appointment with Doctor Hosack over lunch tomorrow anyway.

 

x---x

He shoots down Doctor Hosack’s efforts to discuss a regular anti-anxiety medication. “I’ll take my chances with two years between panic attacks, thanks.”

Which he knows is full of shit even before the long-suffering look he receives overtop the man’s glasses. “And I’m supposed to believe that it’s entirely a coincidence that you scheduled your first appointment in months and just happened to have a panic attack a day beforehand?” He sighs noisily, shrugs, and holds his gaze level. “Alexander, in between your run-of-the-mill, daily anxiety and a panic disorder lies a spectrum, you realize.”

“I do realize, and I realize I am comfortably _on_ that spectrum. We’ve talked about this – I tried it, I didn’t like it, I’d really rather not.”

Doctor Hosack extracts a commitment to take up a more regular appointment schedule again, and concedes defeat.

Alexander attempts to mitigate his obstinacy by _not_ being his usual belligerent, minimalizing self in regards to the day prior, but his recall is too… detached. Clinical. Confounding to his own mind, because it seems so absurd in retrospect, the whole episode.

“Did you make this appointment when you found out about the summons?”

“Yeah,” he answers, but then stops short. Bites his lip when the doctor looks at him expectantly. “But I was thinking about it a couple days before. Mister Stevens came to visit. My guardian,” he clarifies awkwardly after a beat. “Former.”

“Your roommate’s father.”

“Yeah. I think…” He glances around, desperate for a distraction, but there aren’t many on offer. No windows, and posters on the wall he’s stared at for too many appointments prior. “I was happy to see him but I think my brain likes to… keep him in his lane, as it were.”

“He belongs back in Saint Croix, you mean.”

“I think adult Alex has regrets about teenage Alex’s relationship with Mister Stevens,” he works out slowly. Hadn’t really dedicated the time and emotional fortitude for this analysis yet.

Doctor Hosack frowns thoughtfully at him. “My impression was always of a fundamentally positive relationship.”

He shrugs. Suddenly hot and uncomfortable, and not quite sure why. “I don’t know. I guess I just can’t help but feel like I was more trouble that I was worth sometimes.”

“Fortunately,” the doctor smiles wryly, “parenthood isn’t a zero-sum game.”

“Tell that to my father,” Alexander snorts. And then wearily adds, “No, I don’t want to talk about that.”

“Let’s talk about your brother, then.” 

His head thumps against the cushioned back of the chair.

 

x---x

When he makes it to the office after his appointment, he checks his phone and sees a text from Olivia. 

_From: Olivia Wolcott_

_I retract my earlier jeering; the only thing that could have improved your smackdown would be tearing the mic out of the table just so you could then drop it._

_To: Olivia Wolcott_

_Apparently there’s a fine line between “being informed” and “sounding threatening” who knew?_

Part of him wants to feel flattered, because Olivia is one of the smartest and most tenacious people he’s ever known. Her approval rings hollow though, given the totality of the clusterfuck, and he has to fight to remain cordial in his reply when he gets an email from a Josephine Dennie, who he presumes to be the same _Buzzfeed_ reporter who contacted Olivia the night prior.

No interview, no comment on the prior day’s events. Keep his mouth shut until the end of work tomorrow, and then enjoy a week away in Charleston and a week at home with John, no work, nowhere to be and, with Edward in Saint Croix, as much time naked in bed as they please.

And he almost makes it.

Less than two hours until his break officially starts – and he is _counting_ the minutes – he gets a short email from one of the staffers in the press office upstairs.

_Congratulations, Ham, you’re click-bait_.

He clicks the link.

**Congressman questions credentials of 22-year-old White House staffer; promptly has ass handed to him**

“God _dammit_ ,” he mumbles under his breath.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Christmas in Charleston, pt 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just a heads-up, the 2nd/middle section here is one of I think 2 scenes that made me waver between an M and E rating for this fic.   
> So, if ye be not wanting to read a more explicit scene, perhaps skip past that.

“George Eacker,” Henry Laurens tells them during the drive from the airport, “won his seat in 2016. First run, first time holding office. I know he spent some time in George Clinton’s office before that and, if memory serves, he worked in Bob Yates’s Albany office when Yates was majority leader. He was a lawyer by trade, before that.”

Dating the son of the opposing party’s retired Speaker of the House does have its perks. But there’s nothing there that tells him anything about why this _particular_ asshole put on such a lively display of assholishness for his benefit three days ago.

“Well,” Alexander murmurs from the backseat, staring absently out the window as they merge onto the freeway, “his cross-examination skills could probably use some work.”

“He was out of line,” Henry offers, quiet and a bit cautious, and Alexander glances over and catches his eyes momentarily in the rearview mirror. It’s all he says by way of value judgment; anything else risks landing insincere, or flat at the very least. Had the arcs of their lives landed incrementally differently, it’s wholly conceivable that Henry himself could have been on that committee, or at least endorsed its tactics as Speaker or minority leader. It’s not yet two years since the man left D.C., not long after Alexander relocated from New York.

It’s his third trip to Charleston – Thanksgiving the year prior, and a week over the summer before John started clinical rotations – and his lingering weariness from Wednesday’s interview still has him feeling off-kilter and not wholly optimistic that _this_ trip will be the one that starts to ease that baseline level of awkward up towards something more comfortable.

“How’s the house treating you?”

John chuckles and slips a hand in the gap between the seat and the door, reaching back towards Alexander. He takes the hand, lets their fingers twine together. “I think what you mean to ask is how are _we_ treating the house.”

“ _Both_ , then,” Henry shoots an exasperated, sidelong glance at his son.

“It’s a bit more cluttered these days, I won’t lie.”

“So… it looks like three twenty-four year-olds live there, basically.”

“Hey now,” Alexander pipes up from the backseat, “twenty-two, I _know_ you couldn’t resist actually watching my moment of C-SPAN glory.”

The car is quiet for a minute before Henry confesses as they change lanes, “I thought Eleanor was about to lose consciousness for how hard she was laughing. _A question or a complaint_. What I would’ve given to see the look on Tim Bloodworth’s face.”

 

The biggest change from their last visit is with John’s two siblings. Back in June, his brother, Harry, was just out of high school and enjoying his last summer with his friends before going their separate ways for college, which had the side-effect of making Harry both too busy and too cool to spend more time than strictly necessary around his family.

His sister, Maggie, turned sixteen in November and acquired her driver’s license, and with it perhaps a minor lobotomy; gone is the nearly hero worship enthusiasm for her oldest brother’s presence. They catch her at the base of the stairs as they come in the door, heading up to her room with a bottle of mineral water in her hand.

“Oh. Hey.” She waves absently and then dashes off.

“Oh,” John echoes. “Uh. Bye.” They listen to her pound up the stairs and then a second later hear her door banging shut. “So we’ve hit _that_ age.”

“We have hit that age,” Henry agrees solemnly. “Harry’s starting to like us again. Absence makes the heart grow fonder.”

As if on cue, John’s mother, Eleanor, comes sweeping out of the kitchen, the smells of lunch wafting behind her, and sweeps her eldest up into an impressively bone-crushing hug for her small stature.

Henry holds out a hand for Alexander’s coat, and he awkwardly shuffles out of it. “I have a hard time imagining John being _that age_ at all.”

“Hm.” They follow along behind John and Eleanor, already deeply engrossed in conversation. “Harry and Maggie being so much younger certainly mitigated the experience.”

“Too busy taking Harry to soccer practice to be properly angry at the world and holed up in his bedroom?”

“Hey now.” He gets a balled up napkin lobbed at his head, and turns and finds Harry sitting on the counter in a Duke sweatshirt, shoving a muffin into his mouth. “Little League.”

Henry picks up the napkin and tosses it back to his son. “Trash.” He points and gestures. “Counter.” Harry hops down. “And _lunch_ soon, honestly, son.”

“I’m a growing boy.”

John snickers. “You’re a college freshman, I think we all know which direction you’ll be growing.”

They both get a well-aimed thwack from a dish towel. “You’ve not even said hello and you’re already being mean to one another,” Eleanor reproves. And then she sets her sights on Alexander and a soft smile lights up her face as she comes forward to fold him into a tight embrace. “How are you, darling?”

_Darling_ , John mouths at him from behind her back.

“I’m good,” he says. “Thank you. And thanks for having me.”

“We missed you last Christmas, it’s good that you’re taking a break this year.”

John smiles down at the floor, and certainly neither of them mention that he’d had time off but simply felt that two holiday trips to South Carolina in as many months would strain his sanity; instead, he’d recreated his college tradition and spent a few days in Albany with the Schuylers. “I think the time off will do me good.”

She fusses over them a bit. Sits everyone down and has a cup of coffee in front of Alexander before he can even think about asking for refreshment. They get the basics out of the way, their early wakeup, the flight from D.C., and then Eleanor says without preamble and a bit primly, “George Eacker is an asshole.”

Harry cackles and high-fives John; Henry splutters around a sip of tea. “Well, then.”

“I can say things like that now,” she points out sagely. “I don’t have to be diplomatic anymore.”

Okay, so _maybe_ , he thinks, this trip is starting to look up slightly compared to his past visits. “I do have a tendency to rub people the wrong way.”

She reaches over and pats his hand. “Of course you don’t, dear, what a terrible thing to say about yourself.”

“Pointing out that he helped put John Ashe in prison _was_ bound to lose that particular room.” All eyes turn to John, and Alexander raises his brows. “I’m just saying!”

Harry butts in before anyone can castigate John over his point. “Hold up. You’re _younger_ than Jacky.”

“Just by a year,” John frowns at his brother.

“How did you have time to go to Columbia, graduate, work for a newspaper, and _then_ move to D.C. a few months after John started med school?”

“Well, when you put it like that,” John allows.

Alexander kicks his boyfriend’s foot under the table and tells Harry drolly, “I funnel my clinical anxiety into non-stop over-ambition in my academic and professional life, instead of managing it in healthy or relaxing ways.”

“Oh,” Harry says, like it’s the most natural response in the world. “Cool.”

 

x---x

Despite Alexander’s initial skepticism, they do make a point of having sex in John’s childhood bedroom that weekend, because the arrival of some cousins on Monday promises a few days of cramped quarters. The illicitness of it is exciting in its way, giggling whispers and soft moans as they touch each other, hands and mouths, careful not to ruin the sheets, and keenly cognizant of Harry’s room that shares a wall and Maggie’s across the hall.

On Sunday, after a long day split between helping out around the house and touring some of John’s favorite spots around Charleston with Harry and a reluctant Maggie in tow for some last minute shopping, Alexander climbs into bed with a couple of extra finds from their suitcase.

“Hey,” John tells him absentmindedly, nose buried in a psychiatry text in preparation for his next rotation. Alexander sits on his knees, staring at him pointedly until he actually looks up and catches sight of the lubricant bottle and the condom wrapper in Alexander’s hands. “Oh. Hello. So it’s _that_ kind of a party.”

“I want you.” He lifts the book from John’s lap and lowers it carefully to the floor, open to the page where he left off. Eases forward up his body and then lowers himself so that they’re chest-to-chest, his face pressed into John’s neck. “I want to _feel_ you.”

Hands drift slowly down his back, fingertips pressing into his ribs, his hips, until they come to rest on his ass, cupping him through his jeans and urging him a bit higher up until the bulge in his pants presses against one firming up nicely in John’s. “Feel that?” 

“Not enough. Not where I want it.”

“Oh.” John ducks his head and coaxes Alexander’s face up. Kisses him slow and deep while he wraps one leg around his hips and rolls them sideways until he’s half on top, pressing him into the tangled sheets. “Well, where did you want it?”

Alexander lets out a muffled squawk, pinned as he is by John’s lips. “Your ability to be both cheesy and coy at the same time will never cease to amaze.” He works his hands up under the back of John’s sweater. “So how loud are these bedsprings, anyway?”

He laughs as he sits up to peel his shirt off. “Unless they’ve atrophied significantly in the past five years, they’re quite discreet.”

“You hussy.”

“Doesn’t do us much good for how loud _you_ are,” John laments.

 

Which is how he finds himself biting into a mouthful of pillow about ten minutes later, lying on his side with one leg draped over John’s as John presses inexorably forward into Alexander’s slowly yielding body, one hand gripped tight on his hip and the other under wrapped firmly around his middle and holding him in place.

Everything is slick and hot, sweat and John’s heavy gasps in his ear, the bite of teeth under his jaw. He chases it, chases the press and the stretch, the overwhelming slide as John withdraws and the breathless shock of him rutting forward again.

He barely recognizes his impending orgasm amid the chaotic jumble of too much and not enough, but John knows him, his body, and he pulls out and pulls Alexander over onto his back. The pillow falls away and he gasps out, “Wha-?” and then John’s mouth is on him, all tight, wet heat and he comes with the first swipe of tongue over the head of his cock, throws his forearm over his mouth to muffle the gasping sob that tears from his throat.

Panting, he watches John wipe at his mouth, something obscene in the gesture, in his grin. “Okay?”

“C’mere,” he gasps, dragging John back down to him. His legs wrap around John’s hips, drawing him in, and he bites John’s shoulder as John groans, sinking back in to Alexander’s body. Different angle, the press deeper, the drag sharper, his nerves alight as John presses forward once, twice, a third time and then stills with a gasp into Alexander’s neck as he comes deep inside.

“ _Jesus_ ,” John mumbles, and then kisses the furrow on Alexander’s brow as he cringes at the feeling of the condom sliding out of his body one last time. “Okay?” he asks again.

“Okay,” he agrees softly. 

They sleep curled up in one another that night in a way that, amidst their hectic daily schedules and perpetual exhaustion, they haven’t managed in a long time.

 

x---x

When they wake the next morning, John heads straight downstairs in a pair of plaid pajama pants and an old high school sweatshirt. Not quite at the level comfort with the Laurens family required for roaming the house in an underdressed state, Alexander ducks into the bathroom across the hall and takes a hot shower just shy of scalding.

Maggie’s hovering against the wall between the bathroom and her bedroom when he emerges, towel draped over her arm and peering down at her phone. “You two aren’t as quiet as you think you are,” she murmurs noncommittally without so much as looking up at him.

He halts mid-step; blinks and pivots to catch her smirking glance. “Well,” he says after a beat, “that’s mortifying, thank you.” She snickers. “Excuse me while I go walk into the ocean.”

“Alex,” she calls after him before he can disappear back into John’s bedroom. “I’m kidding. Someone left a condom wrapper at the top of the trash and I have outstanding deductive skills.”

“I will shamelessly lay the blame for that solely on your brother, in that case.”

She scoffs and heads into the bathroom, shaking her head. “S’like amateur hour over here.”

 

The scent of coffee and sound of low conversation lures him through the kitchen for a mug and out the sliding doors into the solarium. The usual morning sun is hampered by ominous clouds that make him wonder if they’re not due for thunderstorms instead of a white Christmas, but John is stretched lazily across a wicker couch like an indolent cat, listening to his parents talk.

“…certain brazenness to the maneuver if he _does_ run,” Henry is saying as Alexander budges John’s legs aside. “I really didn’t think he had it in him.”

“Good morning, Alexander,” Eleanor smiles at him. “How did you sleep?”

He very pointedly does _not_ look at John, but he can feel the amusement in his gaze. “I slept well, thanks. What’s going on?”

John pulls himself up to sitting and informs him succinctly, “Thomas Jefferson resigned this morning.”

“ _What_?” He pats absently for the phone he left upstairs by John’s bed. “You’re kidding.”

“He _announced_ his resignation this morning,” Henry clarifies for his son. “He’ll stay on another few months.”

“You think he’s going to run against Adams in two years?" 

Henry shrugs. “Quietly stepping aside for no apparent reason and announcing it the week of Christmas, when no one’s paying attention? I’ll bet he’s thinking about it.”

 


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Christmas in Charleston, pt 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warnings:
> 
> there's a brief convo in this chapter involving a minor feeling pressured about sex
> 
> also a convo about past politically-expedient homophobia

It’s Maggie who makes the connection.

Ten hours later – once the internet has had some time to mull the news and Twitter has assessed every inch of Jefferson’s diplomatic and political careers front, backwards, and sideways – they’re sitting at dinner, aunt, uncle, and cousins arrived from Atlanta and the conversation largely focused on their catching up with Henry and Eleanor.

They’re sitting at dinner, a chaotic affair with the ten of them around the table, when Maggie laughs and says, “Holy shit. Publius has been dead for two years and is _still_ scoring political slam dunks.”

“Language,” Henry barks.

“Phone,” Eleanor adds, and fixes a level stare at her daughter until she tucks the offending device under her leg with a scowl.

“Who?” her aunt Sarah asks.

Alexander does his absolute, level-best to avoid looking conspicuously interested. Or conspicuously _dis_ interested.

“Just some blogger,” Maggie says with a shrug and around a mouthful of sweet potato, while Eleanor glances beseechingly up towards the heavens for patience. “Who had an uncanny knack for political prediction a few years back.”

“Were you reading political commentary blogs in middle school?” Harry teases.

“Just the post that mentioned Jack.” John groans. “Well – and Alex, too, but not by name.”

Alexander gives her a dry smile. “Well, no one knows who _I_ am, so.”

There’s much confusion and clamoring amongst perplexed relatives, and Eleanor has to bark, “Phone!” twice more at both Maggie _and_ Harry when they try to look up the pertinent post. Eventually, John relents and explains, “Alexander and I were at a wedding at the White House. The photographer had a couple pictures of us dancing,” _and kissing,_ Alexander does not add, “and certain corners of the internet found that… inappropriate. For the occasion.”

_Inappropriate_ is probably generous as descriptors go, but he lets that slide, too.

“And amidst fielding a post about, basically, _should the White House be a wedding venue_ , Publius, ah… _took umbrage_ with the question of propriety. And if I recall correctly,” he adds, corner of his lip quirking up in a wry smile, “I wasn’t mentioned by name so much as _Henry Laurens’s son_.”

“Henry Laurens’s son, and dance partner,” Alexander laments. “That’s us.” He turns to Maggie and asks, “So why is the internet dragging Publius back from the grave?”

“Because the day it was announced that Thomas Jefferson was Washington’s new Secretary of State, he speculated that Jefferson was playing Washington like a fiddle, basically, and would resign near the beginning of 2025 so he could run for president in 2026.”

Which sets off a lively discussion about Jefferson, for whom the table seems to have mixed feelings, and Adams, who the table seems to largely despise, and Alexander mostly tunes it out. Isn’t interested in getting into a political conversation with a family whose views by and large skew quite right of his own. 

Of course, it doesn’t help that as nonplussed as he is about Jefferson’s cynical maneuvering and much as he’d rather not see the Democratic-Republican party in the presidency now that Washington’s administration has built up such a lively majority for the Federalists in Congress… part of him would almost _prefer_ President Jefferson over President Adams, who will undoubtedly ride Washington’s popularity as president all the way to the Oval Office right behind him.

 

x---x

Christmas dawns muggy and humid, the temperature closer to what he’d have expected back on Saint Croix than what they left behind in D.C. Monday’s clouds haven’t let up, and it’s just starting to rain after breakfast when everyone is getting ready to go to church.

John and Alexander bow gracefully out of that endeavor, which earns them jealously longing looks from fourteen and sixteen-year-old cousins Ellie and Laney. Harry and Maggie trot along dutifully, and just like that, they have the entire house to themselves for the first time since they arrived.

John plucks the ever-present coffee mug from his hands and leads him through the solarium and out onto the deck. He goes straight up to the railing, overlooking the expanse of the backyard, the cluster of trees at the back of the property that he knows from past exploration ends in a creek, and he leans out, hair blowing about in the breeze and eyes closed.

“This was always my favorite,” he says. “The fresh smell of spring rain warring with the smell of the ocean as a storm rolls in.”

“It’s December,” Alexander points out.

John waves him off. “It’s South Carolina, don’t look for sense.”

The first rumblings of thunder echo out in the distance. “Think God’s pissed we didn’t go to church.”

“Merry homage to commercialism day,” John tells him solemnly.

“And also with you.” He pauses. “Am I doing it right?”

He doesn’t get an answer, but is silenced instead with a kiss. “I’m really glad you came,” John murmurs against his lips.

“I haven’t yet, but we’ve got time.”

“Three days ago, you called _me_ cheesy, _honestly_.”

“You sound like your dad. _Honestly_.”

John groans. “You absolutely can _not_ make a sex joke and then talk about my father in the next sentence, have some decency.”

They go for a walk instead in the light rain as they listen to the thunder rumble closer. Across the dew-covered grass through the yard to a swing set near the trees that’s withstood the test of time despite, Alexander assumes, not having been used much in some years.

“When did your family move here?” Alexander asks while they test out their weight on the swings.

“Oh, jeez. Uhh… after Harry, before Maggie.” He kicks off, feet drawn up awkwardly on every down-swing so his shoes don’t drag across the ground. “It was a good place to grow up.”

Alexander thinks back on the places where he grew up, the places worth noting, and feels a strange disconnect at the realization that some of them – Peter’s apartment, the group home – are probably unrecognizable and others – his mother’s house, Mister Stevens’s – were completely devastated and rebuilt after the hurricane five years ago.

The impulse to text Lucia a _Merry Christmas_ smacks him abruptly, and he scowls inwardly at the urge to overanalyze it.

“My first kiss was in that treehouse over there,” John points, and Alexander follows his gaze to a climbing structure just inside the tree line.

“What was his name?”

John chuckles. “Annabelle.”

“Wow, Annabelle must have been a _bad_ kisser.”

A foot clips him in the shin on John’s next pass. “We were nine. Family friend, we’d just come back from a wedding and decided the logical thing was to have our own.”

“That’s… painfully adorable, actually.”

“And you can be _damn sure_ ,” John tells him with a teasing glint to his eye, “that the first time I kissed a boy, I was not right in the sightline of the room made entirely of windows in the back of the house.”

Alexander snags the chain of John’s swing and drags him to a halt. Leans over, one hand held tight on his own swing to keep him steady, and kisses John slow and deep until the rain starts to fall harder and the thunder starts to rumble louder. “I’d suggest sheltering in the tree house,” he pulls back and nips at John’s ear, “but I’d hate to defile your wedding venue.”

“I seem to recall something about lightning and high places too, but it’s escaping me right this moment.”

 

x---x

It storms like the end of the world until about an hour after the rest of the family returns from their church service. The sun comes out not long after, and by mid-afternoon, Harry is bored and beseeching John to go outside with him and toss a football around.

Alexander stares at the ball blankly when Harry tosses it to him – _very gently_ , he defends to his mother – in the living room. “I am honest-to-God not certain I’ve ever even touched a football before.” Which leads to much uproar and much outrage, until he shouts as he’s dragged outside, “Cricket and driving on the left! It’s our colonial cross to bear, _okay_?”

Maggie digs up a soccer ball as well, and she brings the cousins outside to laugh at Alexander’s short-lived and pitiful attempts to learn how to throw a football, while the adults, as it were, settle on the deck with glasses of wine in hand. 

Alexander gives up when Maggie takes the ball out of his hand, tells Harry to “Go long,” and then lobs a perfect spiral down the length of the backyard. He retreats to the aforementioned tree house and settles in with his feet dangling over the ladder to watch the cousins run around.

After about ten minutes, Maggie meanders over to join him, offering the others a half-hearted wave as they switch to the soccer ball, a two-on-two matchup that quickly looks to be hilariously mismatched in the girls’ favor. Alexander budges aside to give her room to climb up, and she settles herself down heavily next to him in his former spot with her legs hanging off the side.

“Nice arm,” he tells her.

She shrugs noncommittally. “My boyfriend plays.”

There’s a minute of awkward silence between them, and then she abruptly asks without looking at him, “Can I ask you something?”

“Uh. Sure.”

“When did you and John start having sex?”

_Christ_. He rubs at his forehead wearily. “Hey, look – I’m sorry, if we made you uncomfortable with -”

“No,” she cuts him off, and a red flush rises high in her cheeks. “That isn’t what I – um. Sorry. I just… wondered. I know you guys met pretty young.”

_Oh_. He sighs inwardly; gets why she’d ask _him_ , instead of a family member, but at the same time can’t help but wonder just what is his life.

And there’s a deep pull of something uneasy in his stomach as he realizes that he was her age, practically to the month, when he met John. “Boyfriend, huh?” Her shoulders twitch, a hint of an embarrassed shrug. “I don’t know how much wisdom _I_ have to impart on this particular matter, but my hunch says that if you’re uncertain enough to solicit an opinion from your holiday house-guest, you’re probably not ready.”

She chuffs out a laugh at that; accepts his gentle chiding without offense. “He said _not-ready_ is just another way of saying _scared_ that makes us feel better about ourselves.”

Alexander does an honest-to-God double-take at that. “Have you considered telling him to get lost?”

“He’s my boyfriend.”

“He doesn’t have to be,” he points out gently.

The indignation drops from her face and her shoulders slump with it. “Yeah.”

“If you really want to know,” he offers, and she turns back to him, chewing on her lip and looking so goddamn _young_ he wants to cry, “not until a bit after we moved in together. So… about a year and a half after we started dating? Nearly five years after we first met.”

“Oh.”

“I had some hang-ups about some stuff. So we waited.”

“That simple?” she asks.

_Simple_ isn’t his word of choice to encompass the vast array of bullshit surrounding his relationship with physical intimacy, but on the other hand it’s the perfect word for John’s ready acceptance of the long wait. “Your brother’s a good one.”

 

x---x

Alexander reaches Friday, the night before their flight back north, proud of his restraint when it came to checking in on work. Limited himself to two email checks a day, once in the morning and once before bed, didn’t compulsively follow the news except for a brief daily perusal of the Twitter-sphere’s dissection of Publius’s prophecy regarding Jefferson.

It largely fizzled out by Friday. Hadn’t been _trending_ since Wednesday night. He’s fully prepared for the blog to sink back into the ether and disappear from everyone’s collective memories once more when a segment on the news, on in the background while they sit around and chat after dinner, turns his head.

“ _…Congressman James Madison, speaking to a group of college students during a town hall at Virginia Commonwealth University, addressed Secretary Jefferson’s abrupt departure from President Washington’s cabinet._ ”

Henry spares a curious glance at the television but keeps his attention mostly fixed on the story Harry is telling about one of his fall semester classes. John notes his sudden distraction and pauses to listen as the anchors cut away to a clip from the auditorium where Madison spoke.

“ _Congressman_ ,” a young man with a microphone in a sea of students reads off of a card, “ _you worked for Secretary Jefferson for a long time. A lot of us used to follow_ Shouting in the Square _and are…_ intrigued _by Publius’s speculation regarding the Secretary’s plans_.”

Madison smiles faintly to himself. Glances down at the floor and murmurs into his mic, “ _Ah, yes. Publius. Our resident Beltway Nostradamus_.” There’s a chuckle, echoed by John at his side, and Madison looks up again and asks, “ _I’m sorry, your question?_ ”

The student shrugs and asks bluntly, “ _Was Publius right? Has the secretary been planning on a ’26 run all along?_ ”

“ _I cannot speak for Secretary Jefferson’s motivations, nor will I try._ ” There’s a considering pause, and then he adds delicately, “ _And given that Publius has… moved on… from the anonymous blogging days, I should hope they have enough common sense not to risk present professional standing in the interests of trying to, either._ ”

The room sort of… stops. Takes a breath, parses his words, and the student still standing there says, “ _I’m sorry, Congressman, are you… implying that you_ know _who Publius is?_ ”

Madison just smiles blandly and motions for the next question, and the clip cuts away.

Not exactly subtle, as shots across the bow go.

“Madison’s always been a smug son-of-a-bitch,” Henry shakes his head and lowers the volume, “but I have to hand it to him on generating primetime cable news coverage for a two-term congressman.”

“You think he’s lying?” Harry asks around a yawn. “Why should he?”

“Because it’s a pretty safe gamble, as gambles go, that this blogger you kids were all worked up over won’t resurface after two years of silence to refute him if he is.”

John holds up a single finger. “ _I_ , for one, was not worked up.”

Harry waves him off. “You were in England.”

“They have the internet there, you know.”

“But not a lot of college and high school kids interested in the minutiae of American politics, you don’t understand! Publius _got it_ – the apathy, the sense of futility, he broke down all the bullshit so it made sense, was smart and prescient, _and_ how many teenagers get their blogs called out _by the president_?”

John throws his hands up in the air. “All I’m saying is, you have no way of knowing Publius really _was_ a teenager!”

“Alexander gets it,” Harry declares, and Alexander glances up at him in surprise. “You worked in the media, tell me everyone wasn’t desperately curious to figure out who was behind the pseudonym?”

“Um,” he starts haltingly, while all eyes pivot to him. “I mean. It wasn’t a top priority but yeah I mean, I guess most of the _Post_ ’s reporters would have dropped everything if they stumbled on _that_ particular scoop.” 

Henry chuckles. “If only they knew that James Madison held they key to their hearts all this time.”

 

x---x

He and John retire early for the night; have to leave for the airport by six, and John’s breathing deeply, breath tickling the back of Alexander’s neck, before it’s eleven.

He tries to tell himself he’s too keyed up, but knows deep down that his plan all along was to wait for John to fall asleep and then slip away. Trust in the long weeks of exhausting hospital shifts to keep him in bed after the initial bleary confusion at Alexander slipping away from his hold.

While waiting for John’s breathing to return to its deep, even pitch, he sits at the desk and looks up an article about Madison’s town hall from the _Richmond Times-Dispatch_. Immediately after a November reelection for his third term, in a fairly uneventful period as federal politics go, they, too, have the article framed around his brief commentary about Jefferson and Publius.

When he deems it safe, he dons an old high school hoodie of John’s and slips out the door into the dark hallway. Sees light coming under both Harry and Maggie’s doors, and isn’t sure about the wakeful status of Henry and Eleanor, so he pads quietly down the stairs and through the kitchen. Narrowly avoids smacking himself straight into the door of the solarium, and then flips on a muted table light and slides the door quietly shut again behind him.

And he makes a phone call. It picks up before the end of the first ring.

“ _Hello, Alexander_.”

“I got your message,” he says flatly.

“ _Good – are you going to_ listen _to this one_?”

How he couldn’t see this coming, he will never understand. “It must be hard,” he muses, stretching out on the long wicker couch flat on his back and staring up through the glass-paned ceiling at the stars. “Dealing with dueling loyalties, Washington and Jefferson.”

“ _Not as difficult, I imagine, as managing the constant war between your common sense and your ego._ ” At least Madison has the good grace not to deny it. “ _But I am sorry you are finding yourself caught in the middle_.”

“Answer me this at least – if I make a few well-placed calls, will I find out that you scheduled tonight’s event last minute, _after_ I shot off at the mouth in front of you and your colleagues.” The silence is telling, and he barks out an incredulous laugh. “You cynical bastard. You knew. Even during the holiday break, you knew it would be predominantly college kids at that town hall, you _knew_ one of them was bound to ask, you _wanted_ someone to ask.”

“ _That’s right. So I’ll ask again – are you going to listen to me this time?_ ”

“If I were planning to moonlight as Publius while working in the west wing,” he snaps, “I wouldn’t have hung it up two years ago.”

“ _Good. I suppose tonight’s exercise was needless, then._ ”

“Better safe than sorry though, am I right?”

“ _Good_ night _, Alexander_.”

The line goes dead. He groans and drops the phone on his stomach, and then wipes his hands over his face. Can’t even quite discern what has him so unsettled about the whole episode, beyond perhaps the fact that it puts his old writings back in a certain amount of spotlight right at the moment he’s hoping that the internet will quickly move on from his _Buzzfeed_ debut.

It occurs, somewhere in the deep recesses of his mind, for the first time since he took the job under Morris, that he ought to tell Lafayette.

He knows he won’t.

How long he stays there watching the stars overhead, he cannot say. Heavy footsteps snap him out of his reverie, and he cranes his neck around as Henry slides open the door and peers in at him. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah. Sorry, I – more of a night owl. Didn’t want to wake up John.”

He gets a bit of a strange look at that. “You’re fine, Alexander.” Heat rises in his face when he realizes he’s been here an entire week now and just _apologized_ for wandering the house unaccompanied. “I just came down to put on some tea for Eleanor.”

While Alexander shifts around and sits up, feeling wholly awkward under the scrutiny, Henry hovers in the threshold for several seconds, looking almost as awkward. Eventually he takes a step inside and tells him, “Jacky used to do that.” His brows rise, curious. “The first summer we lived here, he’d bring his sleeping bag, open all the windows, stare up at the stars, and pretend he was camping.”

It registers that he’s being offered something here.

“He told me that he got married in the treehouse out back when he was nine to a girl named Annabelle.”

Okay, so he’s never been very good at this.

Henry blinks at him, and then throws his head back and laughs. “Oh, she used to follow him around. They moved away a few years later.”

“Wonder if her parents knew they were breaking up a happy marriage.”

He chuckles and comes further into the room. Settles himself in the adjacent chair and okay, so apparently they’re doing this. “At nine, he was going to be a lawyer, like his mother.”

Alexander opens his mouth, and then pauses, confused. “Aren’t you… _also_ a lawyer?”

“Not according to nine-year-old John.”

“Fair.”

“When I became Speaker a few years later, he took a little more interest in my career.” He frowns, and muses, “And I somehow missed it entirely when his interests diverged to medicine.”

It’s not lost on him, how hard the time away must have been. How his time at home probably became even more sporadic when he assumed the speakership.

Instead of trying to empathize, he quirks a grin, shrugs, and says, “John’s too nice for politics.”

Henry chuckles under his breath, and Alexander only realizes belatedly how his comment sounded. “And what about _you_ , Alexander?”

“Am I too nice for politics, or is John too nice for me?”

He doesn’t get an answer to that, save a faint smile. Henry sighs and leans forward in his chair. Elbows propped on his knees, hands folded together as he studies Alexander. “I’ve no reason to suspect that we won’t be seeing you for many holidays to come, Alexander, and there’s something I’d like to say to you.”

He straightens; blinks uneasily at the older man.

“We got off on a terribly wrong foot, all those years ago.” Alexander glances down and takes a deep breath; wonders if there’s any chance of the floor opening up to swallow him whole. “Jacky and I… discussed that encounter, at length, after it happened.” The memory of John, red-eyed and full of frantic nerves, surfaces in his mind. “And as I’m sure you can imagine, we’ve had a great many conversations _since_ about me allowing my political interests to interfere in the far, _far_ greater priority of John’s happiness and well-being.

“I suppose…” he trails off. Alexander looks over again, sees Henry looking down at his shoes, before he tries again to collect the words. “John and I are in a good place in our relationship. He’s forgiven me, or says he has, and I _hope_ that you might as well, someday.”

Alexander stares. Perplexed, frustrated on behalf of their younger selves. “He wasn’t lying to you then, you know?” he asks sharply, and Henry nods slowly, carefully. “You embarrassed him, _humiliated_ him, and were it not for the fact that he’d confided in me only a week earlier, you’d have outed him completely against his will. You were cruel, and you were reckless.”

“I _know_ ,” Henry tells him quietly.

“But it’s not my place to forgive any of that. I’m glad John has. I don’t have the kind of roots John does, I’m glad he can still find belonging here.”

“I suppose the point I’m trying to get at,” Henry speaks down to the floor, “is that we’d all be happy if _you_ were to find some here too. Eventually.”

“Oh,” he blinks, “please don’t read my constant levels of _awkwardly out-of-place_ as reflective of our first meeting, that’s mostly just my deep-rooted issues with familial trust and attachment that _far_ pre-date John.”

Which pulls his eyes back up, and pulls the corner of his mouth down in a frown. “You’re very glibly self-deprecating when you’re nervous, Alexander.”

“Do you know where John was supposed to be that night?” he asks abruptly. Heart racing like he’s just run laps around the yard, and he digs his sweaty palms into his hoodie pocket. “The plans he canceled, because the weather rearranged his plans with _you_?” Henry shakes his head slowly. “He was supposed to be with me. There was an event at the National Archives, a panel discussion, fuck if I remember what about.” It vaguely occurs that he generally tries not to make a habit of swearing around the Laurens family. “Thomas Conway first put his hands on me that night.” Henry startles upright in his seat. “In a way that… would have been innocuous, were he not a senator and were I not sixteen. Had he not contrived us into an empty space, alone, before doing so.”

Henry’s just staring at him, clearly taken aback, and Alexander pauses. “Oh.” He frowns. “Sorry, were we… pretending you didn’t know that was me?”

“I didn’t.”

“Wait, seriously?”

“You can’t think John’ll have volunteered the information. I’m assuming _he_ knows.”

Alexander can’t help but marvel at his impressive powers of self-sabotage. “Of course he does,” he sighs. “I guess I just figured… you were Speaker, your son was _in_ the program…”

“Secrets don’t keep very long in D.C., Alexander; Washington and Jefferson were _very_ careful to protect your identity afterwards.”

He recalls Philip Schuyler’s compassionate _I’m sorry, Alexander; I didn’t know_ his first Christmas in Albany. “Well. Before I go back upstairs and sleep off my mortification,” Henry opens his mouth, but Alexander cuts him off hurriedly. “I gave my mother the flu that killed her. Or maybe I just succumbed to the infection faster, but – I was an overthinker by nature even then, and in the weeks after, I couldn’t help but wonder… _what if I hadn’t gone to school that day?_ Whatever day I picked it up. _What if I hadn’t… handed change to that_ one _person at her store?_ What _if_?”

“What if John had been with you that evening, at the National Archives,” Henry concludes for him quietly.

But he shakes his head; that’s not quite it. “We were already emailing. There’d have been other opportunities. But I was confused, and what I had with John was already special in its own way, and _what if_ his take-away from that evening had been anything _but_ a sudden self-consciousness of our closeness that caused him to pull back from our friendship over the next several weeks?”

Alexander shrugs. “I’m not – assigning blame or anything. Your family affairs aren’t responsible for what transpired in the next couple months. It’s just – the constant interplay of the myriad parts that make up our lives, and it’s not simple, the ways in which they all ricochet off one another. But I’m an overthinker; and my head is never quiet.”

The sound of the kettle whistling on the stove cuts sharply through the thick air between them. Henry makes no move to stand, is just looking at him with an unreadable expression on his face.

“I hope I’m here for many holidays to come, too,” he finally says just to break the silence. “But I _think_ , before I can start to feel any semblance of _belonging_ , I have to wait for that little melancholy _what-if_ voice that regrets the time we lost… that regrets that I wasn’t here for any number of holidays _before_ now…. to fade a little further back into my head.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone who might have skipped Shouting in the Square, the opening part of chapter 10 is what they're talking about at dinner ("Henry Laurens's son, and dance partner") and the opening part of chapter 13 is the referenced prediction about Jefferson.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alex & John at a winter's ~~ball~~ office party.

Alexander sees Washington for the first time since his little congressional mishap on New Year’s Eve. There’s a party at the White House – a low key affair, after the more opulent Christmas celebrations in the preceding weeks, something closer resembling a cheesy, honest-to-god _office party_ instead of a presidential ball. Staffers and their significant others, some kids even make appearances earlier in the evening. A lot of people are still out of town anyway, and it’s an excuse for the ones who _are_ around to kick back and pretend they lead normal, everyday lives working in a normal, everyday place.

In that spirit, the tradition is that the president makes exactly one appearance throughout the evening, and the senior staff keep more to themselves, allowing everyone else to kick back without feeling like their bosses (or the president) are watching their every move.

Or, Alexander thinks wryly as he watches Jack Custis throw back a shot of _something_ , their every drink.

It’s a surprise, therefore – and not a pleasant one – to see the _vice_ president already at the ballroom, heading up something of an informal receiving line. Probably just his own pass through the party, considering Adams rarely spends holidays away from his home state of Massachusetts, if he can help it. Whatever the reason, his efforts to escape the man’s notice are rendered futile when his wife catches sight of John.

“Can that be John Laurens? My word,” she beckons him forward and places her hands on his shoulders, sizing him up and down with a fond smile. “It has been some time since we used to watch you run around and cause mischief at Christmas parties.”

Oh, the perks of dating a former congressman’s son.

John puts on his best southern boy charm. Dips his head and grins, and replies, “I’d like to think there’s still some mischief left in me, ma’am.”

Abigail laughs and pats his cheek, and Alexander continues to hover awkwardly in the background, ignoring Adams as astutely as Adams is ignoring _him_ while he exchanges greetings with a pair of wide-eyed interns who followed them in.

“Did I hear right that you’re in medical school now?” A nod. “American, is it? Excellent program,” she commends. “And you’re here tonight at Jack’s invitation, I expect,” she nods towards the undoubtedly most _raucous_ table in the room, where Custis is holding court with a group of friends, her expression going a little pinched in disapproval.

“Oh.” John glances around and finds Alexander lurking behind, and drags him forward. “No, uh – have you met Alexander? He works on the NEC.”

“ _Oh_ ,” her eyes widen slightly, and she takes his hand. “Is this your young man, then?”

John grins. Alexander can’t help but smile in turn as he introduces himself. “Alexander Hamilton, ma’am.”

“How lovely. John,” she seizes her husband’s attention when the interns pass by, “Did you see who turned up?”

Adams takes John’s hand, letting his beady eyes drift between the pair of them. “Mister Laurens. What a pleasure.”

“Mister Vice President.”

“His boyfriend works for Vern,” Abigail points out, and Alexander supposes she’s about the last person connected with this administration who didn’t see him go off the rails in front of a few dozen congressmembers two weeks earlier.

The corner of Adams’s mouth quirks up; it is not an especially amused expression. “Mister Hamilton.”

They shake. Quickly. “Mister Vice President.”

“You’re still here, then.”

He blinks, confused. “Sir?”

Adams shrugs. Nonchalant. Oily smile. “I heard you were on a couple weeks’ leave; thought perhaps it was a gentler way of ushering you out the door after that… performance.”

“Just vacation, I’m afraid.” He doesn’t particularly attempt to hide his disdain. “At least I didn’t punch anyone this time, so.”

“Hm.” Adams sniffs. “I’m sure your eventual departure from this administration will be just as ignominious as that from the Senate, and equally irrelevant.”

Alexander sees John give them a look out of the corner of his eye; Abigail, far as he can tell, is thoroughly absorbed in interrogating him, however, and doesn’t seem to take note of the hostility radiating between the other two men.

At least, judging by the _irrelevant_ quip, Adams seems as ignorant to the underlying cause of his departure as Henry had been. 

Alexander grins brightly, quips, “Getting nervous yet about Secretary Jefferson, sir?” and spins, loops his arm through John’s and drags him off with a couple of hurried excuses towards Abigail.

He and John kick back with some drinks and try to relax. They’ve been back three days from Charleston, Edward is still in the Virgin Islands alternating time with his parents, and the memory of his conversation with a dumbfounded John upon their return home is still bouncing around his head. 

_“You told my dad_ what _?”_

_“I thought he knew!”_

_“Why would he know?”_

_Secrets don’t keep long in D.C._ , Henry had told him, and he gets that, he does. Maybe it just baffles him that the secret kept at _all_ , given the number of people who came out of the whole shitshow the worse for wear. John Andre. Benedict Arnold. Charles Lee, maybe Peggy Shippen, and he’d add Horatio Gates to the list, who was pointedly _not_ invited to run the program again once it resumed three years later, except if even Henry Laurens never knew the identity of their wayward page, he wonders if Gates was made privy to that detail.

He wonders if it’s reflective of his own ego that he’d have expected Andre or Arnold, at least, to spill the truth just because they could, or if he was truly that irrelevant. A blip on all of their professional radars, a nuisance but perhaps not as much of one as Conway himself, without whom none of them would have been in such a position in the first place.

_Just one more in a line_ , he supposes, recalling the claim going all the way back to the year Conway was sworn in. _Overly familiar_ , that student had reportedly settled on, in expressing their discomfort to Lee. _The foundations of the cabal_ , as Washington told him some weeks before he heard about it in the open testimony.

Another had stepped forward, publicly, to admit having slept with the disgraced senator a couple of times during his freshman year of college. Didn’t have much to add in support or condemnation of the man, just that Conway hadn’t made any inappropriate overtures during their time on the Hill and that any poorly-informed sexual choices he’d made at nineteen seemed like little more than a college rite of passage.

Alexander’s never been quite able to figure out how to feel about that, beyond a certain awe at the casual nonchalance of the thing.

The air shifts. Some indescribable change in the atmosphere that he’s come to recognize these past two years, and after a quick glance at his phone – _9:35 –_ he looks around and spies where Washington has entered the ball room with the first lady on his arm, making the rounds before retreating back upstairs to herald the new year in relative quiet and privacy.

Part of it is the weight of the office, but it’s also something about Washington himself. A presence around which the room, any room, will reorient itself.

He sees Lafayette slip in behind Washington, but doesn’t catch sight of Adrienne until she’s leaning in between him and John to plant a quick kiss on each of their cheeks. “Hey, boys.” She puts a plate in front of each of them, bearing two red and blue iced cookies apiece, each one with an artfully loopy number scrawled in silver. “I’ve been having fun upstairs.”

“Very festive,” John commends, taking a bite from the corner of his _5_ cookies.

Alexander snatches it back from him and lines them up so he can take a picture in order, spelling out the new year of 2025.

“How was Charleston?”

“I learned I’m a homewrecker,” Alexander informs her as he pulls up the picture and taps away at his phone. “John got married in his treehouse when he was nine and no one told me.”

“What a cad.”

They bicker. John munches on the proffered sweets and Adrienne pulls up pictures of the girls from their first Christmas. Alexander chews thoughtfully on his blue _0_ cookie and considers his text thread with Lucia. Realizes that they’d missed Christmas altogether and feels a little bad about that as he attaches the new picture.

_To: Lucia H._

_Happy New Year. John got impatient and ruined my aesthetic, don’t mind the teeth marks._

He gets an elbow in the side, and a low murmured, “You doing okay?” 

“I am,” he assures her. “Time off is good.”

“Even with the in-laws?” she teases, and he shrugs, feels pink rising in his cheeks that has nothing to do with the second drink he’s slowly nursing.

“Our esteemed former speaker has sobered considerably in civilian life.” His phone buzzes on the table and he glances at it and quirks a half-smile.

_From: Lucia H._

_Impatience and teeth ruining things, it’s kind of like having a toddler._

Adrienne drifts around the table to exchange pleasantries with some of the communications team, and Alexander slides his phone over to John. “Lucia says you’re like a toddler.”

John reads the exchange and elbows him firmly in the side.

A throat clears behind them, and then Washington’s voice sends them scrambling from their seats. “Ah – Alexander. John, how wonderful to see you tonight.”

“Mister President,” John shakes his hand after hastily wiping it free of cookie crumbs. Alexander can hear Adrienne laughing behind them. “It’s lovely to be here, thank you.”

“We haven’t seen you in a long time. Medical school keeping you on your toes?”

Alexander leans in when John tries to dissemble. “He works longer hours than I do.”

“Hm.” Washington smiles at him. “At the risk of pulling the balance back in your favor, might I steal you from the party for a few minutes to talk shop?”

He at least has to appreciate that he’ll avoid being summoned upstairs in the middle of a work day and _looking_ like he’s being reprimanded by the most powerful man in the world. “Certainly, sir.”

John squeezes his arm as if to wish him luck, and Alexander can feel his eyes following them as he accompanies Washington past the secret service agents standing in the doorway of the cross hall. A smattering of people are milling about in the entrance hall, and in and out of the Blue Room where a photographer is set up, but Washington leads him down to the empty ground floor and towards the west colonnade.

“You’ll have to forgive the detour into the cold night air,” Washington begs as an agent opens the door ahead of them onto the walk. “I left something in the office.”

“Another few years and I’ll reconcile myself to real seasons,” Alexander shrugs and wraps his arms around himself as they head briskly towards the dimly lit west wing.

Washington chuckles. “Did you spend Christmas in South Carolina?”

“We did. It was… surprisingly relaxing. Mostly.”

“How _is_ Henry faring in his retirement?”

His glib answer to Adrienne on his mind, what slips off his tongue instead takes him by surprise. “Reflective, I think. He seems intent on… knowing his children a bit better.”

Washington mulls that over as they step past another agent into the Oval Office, and Alexander flexes his fingers to bring some feeling back to them. “I felt very fortunate, as a senator, to be able to go home at night, every night, while Patsy and Jack were young.” He pauses and considers, and remembers, “Jack’s here tonight. I believe you two know one another from Columbia.”

“We do.”

Washington grabs a folder from the desk and waves him absently into a seat. Alexander hasn’t had occasion to set foot in this room in some time, probably an early meeting with Mercer about the DoD audit schemes nearly a year ago, and the lack of ceremony is strange. The history, the impossible weight of this room, and just the two of them without the constraints of appointments and secretaries and Lafayette bouncing impatiently about the room, ever-keen to move on to the next problem.

“So,” Washington settles on the other couch, across a coffee table, polished shoe jutting uncaringly into the circle of the presidential seal adorning the floor, the seal Alexander stepped around as if he might sully it. “We haven’t had a chance to talk about your trip to the Hill.”

Alexander’s lips pull into a thin line and he looks down at his shoes. “I _am_ sorry, sir.”

It’s quiet until he brings himself to look back up. There’s a gentle amusement on Washington’s face, but none of the disappointment he’d feared. “Do you remember when I introduced you to Hugh?” He nods, cautious. “We always knew this project was going to rub a lot of people the wrong way. As I believe I told Hugh, the fact that you would be disinclined to care about that in the slightest was one of the reasons I wanted you involved.”

He can’t help but chuckle at that, but he does point out, “It didn’t pass me by when we were in Charleston that the administration did a certain amount of… _smoothing things over_ with Congressmen Ames and Bloodworth.”

“Yes,” Washington allows slowly. “And in the meantime, everyone who considers critiquing the cost of the audit as we approach the State of the Union is keenly, _painfully_ aware that their districts’ relationships with the Defense Department are going to be picked over in the media with a fine-tooth comb, not to mention their campaign donors.”

“Well in that case, we can just pretend that was my plan all along, Mister President.”

He laughs. “I hope Gil wasn’t too hard on you.” Alexander shoots him a quizzical look. “He said he sent you straight home.”

“Oh.” He blinks and looks back down. Frowns and considers, thinks about Henry’s words yet again. _Washington and Jefferson were_ very _keen to protect your identity_ , and the urge to confide in Washington hits him strongly, suddenly, surprisingly. Always a little on edge about the connection between them that stretches further than _president_ and _cog in the White House wheel_. Always a little defensive about the undeniable boost Washington has given him since the ignominious end of his page days.

He bites his lip, sends a silent apology to Lafayette, and admits, “He didn’t send me home, per se. I, ah… I get panic attacks on occasion; had one in the car on the way back. He took me to _his_ house so Addy could keep an eye out while I slept off my meds.” And then he adds, feeling the flush in his cheeks, “It’s not… I pretty much stopped having them when I moved here, and I got lax about heading them off. Apparently.” 

Washington is searching his eyes. More curious than concerned, which is the only thing that helps Alexander hold his gaze. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” he says quickly, reflexively. “Yes, sir. I just…”

He thinks about all the little things. The not-so-little things. The unexpected anxiousness brought on by his return to the Hill; the _what-ifs_ he’d discussed with Henry, and the inadvertent sharing of a damning secret. John and Edward’s suddenly hectic schedules, always feeling a step out of sync with one another, the ever-present looming question of his brother, Madison’s cynical games, and it occurs that this, here, _now_ , is the time to fess up about his online alter-ego as Publius, except –

His phone buzzes in his pocket, shattering the silence as Washington waits for him to finish his thought. He snatches it up quickly, intent on quieting it, but then the screen catches his eye and he freezes, staring at it.

_Incoming call: Lucia H._

“Is everything okay?”

Heart racing, he smacks a button on the side and jams the thing under his leg. “Yes, sir, sorry.”

“Do you need to take that?”

He has no idea. That isn’t what they do. A couple of early emails with James, and then the long and sporadic text correspondence with Lucia, and they’ve never once actually _spoken_ , and he can’t fathom why now, tonight, she’d break that tradition.

It seems like the rudest thing in the world, to sit opposite the president in the Oval Office and bow out to talk to someone else.

But he also knows that Washington would find that attitude absurd. “I probably should call back, yes, sir.”

“Then let me just give you, before you go.” He pulls a sheet of paper from the top of the folder sitting on the coffee table. “We’ve had a couple inquiries in the press office, while you were on vacation. Nothing the administration would respond to, because we don’t talk about the personal lives of White House staffers, of course.”

“Inquiries about me.” It’s not even a question.

Washington smiles, a shade of apology behind his eyes. “Reporters got curious, and you keep a low profile. A couple of them dug up an old tabloid that ran some pictures of Gil and Addy’s wedding, listed you in the wedding party.”

“Ah, yes.” He glances through the printed emails, just fishing expeditions, and sighs. Wants to turn back the clock a month, back to Thanksgiving, back to Mister Stevens’s visit, and start over. “Thank you, sir. I can keep this?”

“Certainly.” Washington stands, returns the folder to the desk. “I’d better finish my rounds – enjoy the rest of the party, Alexander, when you get there.”

He thanks him, and then slips off into the secretary’s reception area instead of traipsing after Washington back onto the colonnade. 

_To: Lucia H._

_At the risk of sounding… something – did you mean to make that call? (if so I can call back in a couple minutes, at a work thing)_

He gets a response almost immediately, and the tendril of cold nerves twists higher up his throat. 

_From: Lucia H._

_I did. That would be great. I hope that’s okay._

Not knowing what to possibly say in return, he opts for nothing. Slips past the agent between the Oval suite and the quiet corridors that lead down towards the bullpen in one direction, Lafayette’s office in another, but then he detours. Cracks open the stairwell that will take him to the NEC suite and his own cramped work space and listens to the echo of his steps on the cold marble stairs. Dark and even more abandoned today than when Lafayette came down to drag him away from his computer the day before Thanksgiving.

When he gets to his desk, he fires off a text to John, letting him know he stepped out to make a call after his chat with Washington, and then lets his finger hover over his sister-in-law’s number, and that’s just –

It’s weird. And if he stops and thinks too long and hard about how weird it is, he’ll never do it, so he smacks the button and leans over in his chair, elbows on his knees, and sucks in a steadying breath.

She sounds young, on the phone. Voice higher than he expected, his expectations built on nothing but the random visions cooked up in the depths of his mind during their sporadic texts. “ _Hi, Alexander_.”

He swallows. “Hey. Hi.”

She laughs, a quick burst that sounds like nerves more than particular amusement, and then she sighs and says, tone careful, far too casual, “ _A work thing, huh_?”

“Uh… yeah.”

The premonition of her next words forms in his head moments before the next words leave her mouth: “ _So how_ does _the White House usher in the new year_?”

_Jesus_. “You clicked the click-bait,” he sighs, with a nervous chuckle. “You never click the click-bait, Lucia.”

“ _It was nice to get a real look at you_ ,” she says wistfully. “ _I won’t pretend I understood too well what you all were talking about, but you certainly held your ground doing it._ ”

“Yeah, well.” A vaguely hysterical laugh escapes him and he slides from his chair and sits instead on the floor. Back to the row of drawers on the left side of his desk, handles digging into his skin. Entirely too cognizant of which drawer houses the bag Lafayette had retrieved for him that day. “I got sent home the rest of that day to sleep off a Xanax high, so.”

“ _A decade lost between you, it’s good to see that you and your brother have_ some _thing in common_.”

It takes him a minute to realize she’s talking about the medication; or maybe just more generally about the anxiety it implies. A flutter of discomfort takes root in his gut at the intimation, like it’s breaking even more rules, somehow.

Or maybe it just stirs some inconvenient and unwanted reflection inside him. Even at ten, at twelve, he’d known on some level that his brother’s apathy was surely born out of more than simply callous disregard.

But he had no context for it then, though, and no context for it now. Never had the burden of a younger sibling to mold his neuroses around (or not). Just the steady companionship of Edward, who bore his bouts of unwarranted anger with relative grace and even fired some back on occasion. Who never resented the long silence of his adjustment into the Stevens household, who adapted to each day’s new normal as it came.

“ _I’ve upset you_.”

“No,” Alexander rushes to disabuse her of that fear. “No. Just… thinking.”

A tense silence hangs heavy between them for another half a minute before she sighs. “ _I’ve fought with myself about making this call and I just… I don’t know. I didn’t want you to misread the tone of an email.”_

“Oh,” he can only say, blank. Because there’s really only one thing she could be calling to say. However much she talks around it in getting there.

“ _James is… he’s having a hard time right now.”_

“He saw the…?”

“ _Yeah. Yeah, and for him, it’s like – he had this abstract vision of you, your life, and now he’s torn between…_ relief _, I think, to have something concrete, to see you and hear you and realize just how well you’re doing? But it also makes it real, I think? The time that’s passed. He left a little kid behind and it’s the first he’s well and truly had to acknowledge that his brother grew up_.”

_That’s not fair_ , he wants to protest, but not really sure what the fleeting thought means even in his own head.

She must read some of it in his silence. “ _I would never… I don’t want you to think I’m pressuring you or… I don’t know,_ blaming _you for your distance. Of course I’m not,_ we’re _not_.”

“But you’re breaking up with me.” His attempt at humor falls flat.

“ _I… it made sense, this, two years ago. A compromise? Keeping the connection but letting you have the distance from James until you were ready_.”

She pauses there; an opening, an offer. Echoes of his agonizing with Mister Stevens about this very matter bounce around in his head, and he can’t make the words come. Doesn’t know where the line between _not ready_ and simply _terrified_ is, or whether they’re just intertwined companions on the same end of the spectrum.

“ _It’s hard on him_ ,” she continues after the hopeful moment passes. “ _And he’d accept the heartache of it forever, because it’s what he thinks he deserves, but I can’t…_ ” She sucks in a deep breath, and he can hear the tears in it. “ _If you’re never ready, I think this, right now, is the best closure he’s going to have, and I can’t let the moment pass by. For my family’s sake_.”

His head thumps back against the drawers.

“ _We aren’t – no one’s going anywhere. And I’ll send you an email with both of our numbers and emails, and our address even, so you’ll have it all in one spot if you ever need it. Want it. I know you didn’t keep the account you used to find James on Facebook but we’re there, too_.”

“Okay.”

“ _I just can’t let this… our connection isn’t in a vacuum, unaffected by your estrangement with your brother. And I don’t want to nurture a relationship with you that acts like it is, and I worry that’s what we’ve started to do_.”

He wants to ask about Raquel; he knows that entirely misses the point. Or maybe that it _is_ the point. “Yeah.” 

“ _We always knew it wouldn’t be easy. When James went to try to track you down. And he’s ready to face that down with you – tomorrow or next month or five years from now – if and when you are, too_.”

“I know,” he whispers, expecting to feel cowardly in return and instead just coming up… empty.

“ _We love you. I hope you know that, too. And I hope we’ll get to meet, one day. But for right now, I have to say goodbye_.”

A lump makes swallowing painful, and then he chokes on spit in his rush to stop her from hanging up. “Wait – I… you don’t have to tell her it’s from me, but. Will you give Kel a hug and kiss for me? Please?”

The way her voice breaks on her response, he can’t help but feel like he fucked that up, too. “ _Of course I will_.” A deep breath and, “ _Goodbye, Alexander_.”

“Bye,” he manages to choke out, and then the line goes dead.

The lump doesn’t dissolve from his throat, but nor does it spark the onslaught of tears he’d expected. He chews on his lip and stares at the dark screen of his phone and there’s just… a gaping maw, a hollow emptiness in the place where the constant fraught worry has resided for nearly two years, the looming pressure of a nonexistent deadline to try and figure out what to do about James and the family he’d built in the years he spent trying to forget he’d once had and abandoned a little brother in the first place.

The decision made for him, in the end; except he knows that’s a lie even in his own head. Nothing’s been decided, the ball has just been more squarely lobbed into his court.

Alexander leans sideways and reaches around to pull open the drawer where his prescription resides, and he plucks out the white bag. Pulls out the box and then flattens the bag, stares at it, the big blocky letters he’d jotted on there as a not-quite-joke when he was living with Hugh back in New York, unenthused about addressing the matter at hand but aware enough that his roommate probably ought to know where to go if he ever started hyperventilating in front of him.

He doesn’t bother with such gimmicks with John and Edward. They know exactly where he keeps his medication at home, and they both know where to find Doctor Hosack’s number in his phone and on the fridge, never mind that they’ve never needed to rush for either.

Before his little congressional mishap, he’d taken a pill to ward off the panic he could feel coming exactly _once_ since moving to D.C, and it was the night he first messaged with his brother, some five months after Mister Stevens told him he’d come looking for him.

He balls up the bag and stares at the box, and feels like there should be some full-circle element here, but it’s not panic growing inside him, just this profound, yearning _empty_.

Lucia’s words echo back in his head – _it’s good to see you and your brother have_ some _thing in common_ – and he hurls the box at the hallway wall opposite his tiny work space and watches absently as the pack of little foil squares flies out and skids out of sight. 

He draws his knees up and puts his head down in his arms and just coasts for a while in his brain.

 

He sits up with a start when a hand touches his shoulder, and then startles even harder to see John’s nose four inches from his own. “Jesus.”

“John,” a voice corrects from somewhere behind John’s looming visage, and he cranes around and blinks in much confusion to see a very _relaxed_ Jack Custis leaning against the far wall with the angrily discarded prescription box turning over and over absently in his hands. “His name is John.” A considering look passes over his face. “So is mine. But nobody calls me that.”

Alexander considers pointing out that he’s known Jack for about five years, before recalling all the downed shots and figuring it’d be a wasted effort.

“Sorry,” John mutters for his ears alone. “They wouldn’t let me wander the west wing on my own. Are you alr-?”

“Oh, _sweet_ ,” Jack pipes up, oblivious to John’s apologies. “Is this Xanax?”

John whips around and stabs a finger in his direction. “I swear to God, Custis, you take one of those on top of everything you’ve had to drink and _God knows_ what else you’ve had tonight, I will throw your ass in a cab, send you to a hospital, and then call either the police or your mother, _your choice_.”

“I would take my chances with the police, I think,” he responds without needing to put in too much thought, and then adds with a much put-upon sigh, “S’empty anyway.”

Alexander already has the dull stare fixed on his face before John can whirl back around, alarm building behind his wide eyes. “They fell out when I chucked the box, calm down.”

“Any particular reason you’re tossing your meds at the wall?”

He just shakes his head. Watches Jack glance about for the lost packet, pull it out from where it’s half-concealed under the cubicle wall, and then carefully slide it back into the box, without taking one as far as Alexander can see. “I need to go home.”

“I can go grab our coats.”

“You can stay if you want, I’m not… freaking out.”

“Jesus, Alexander.”

They meander back upstairs and over to the party. Jack drifts off to find some friends, and Alexander hovers while John retrieves their coats from the coat check, and then they slip out into the cold and grab a cab up by the gate.

He leans into John, who kisses his temple and exhales a heavy breath. “M’worried about you.” He hums in response. Non-committal. “Who was your call to?”

“Lucia.” That earns him a raised-brow look. “We are… putting a hold on things. What little correspondence we shared.”

“Why?”

He shrugs. “Because she realized we were in danger of forging a sort of… parallel relationship that cut James out entirely, and she doesn’t want to do that to him.” John considers that, corners of his lips pulled down. “And they saw the stupid _Buzzfeed_ thing and I guess that kind of… freaked him out a little.”

“Why would that freak him out?”

“’Cause I’m not twelve anymore, I guess. I don’t know.” John pulls him sideways with an arm around his shoulders, and they ride most of the rest of the way like that, John’s lips pressed into his temple once more.

As they’re walking into the front door, Alexander realizes what he really wants is Edward. Considers calling him for a brief moment, but it’s almost eleven which means it’s almost midnight on Saint Croix, so he squashes down the urge and the guilt it inspires in him.

That’s just how some things are, and John’s never been outwardly bothered by it. Just… a different kind of bond. Rooted in certain places, for better or worse, that are more abstract for his boyfriend. The brother he needed as a child when the one he _had_ couldn’t step up to the task.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Friends, it has been A Week(^tm), so I feel bad for leaving you there BUT we have reached the depth of the angst pit and can begin clawing our way back towards daylight next week.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a.k.a. I'm trying to do this from my phone because my laptop is giving me grief.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, folks. If the formatting here gets fucked, I'll fix it when I can. My computer has an issue I don't entirely understand, but I've been whining about getting a new one for months anyway so what can you do.
> 
> Life is also kicking my ass right now so apologies if I take a bit to get things squared away and get back to the posting schedule. Didn't want to leave you hanging without a word after missing Sunday though.
> 
>  
> 
> *chapter warning*- a couple brief mentions of offscreen underage drinking

“Come on,” Peggy wheedles. “It’ll be fun.”

“I do not doubt that in the slightest,” Alexander assures her from where he’s perched on the counter and surveying the living room full of Schuyler sisters. “And I’ll be thrilled to hear which one of you is the most hungover during tomorrow’s swearing-in ceremony on the Senate floor.”

She lobs a hard piece of candy at him from a bag tucked in the pocket of her coat draped over the back of the chair. He snags it out of the air, unwraps it, and pops it in his mouth. “Could always come to that, too,” Peggy offers wryly.

In addition to sounding like an incredibly boring use of his time on a Friday morning, he has exactly zero intention of returning to the Senate chamber as long as he can possibly help it. To be entirely honest, he figures he has a decent shot at making that  _ never _ .

But what he tells her, while the other three inhabitants of the room do their level best not to look awkward at the suggestion, is: “There is not enough money in the world to put me back in a room with John Adams on the last day of my vacation. But thanks.”

She pouts. Angelica reaches over to tug on her ponytail and reprimand, “Leave him be, Pegs. That whole  _ newly-twenty-one  _ novelty does wear off.”

“He’s twenty- _ two _ ,” she points out, incredulous.

Alexander grins. “Only for another nine days.”

“Ugh,” she pouts. “Fine.”

Eliza pipes up from her spot by John on the couch. “You’ll have to forgive her pestering, Alexander, Peggy missed you at Christmas.”

“Oh my  _ God _ , ‘Liza,  _ really _ ?” Peggy demands. “Make it sound like I was pining after him, why don’t you?”

That sets the sisters off into a round of light-hearted bickering, into which he doesn’t care to wade after watching them go at it over four of his six Christmas holidays since moving to the mainland. John looks bored, like it’s nothing novel, but he winks when he catches Alexander’s eye and just shakes his head.

“You sure you don’t mind?” John murmurs as he shrugs on his coat. Eliza and Angelica do the same, donning hats and scarves, while Peggy wanders off in search of a bathroom before embarking upon their night of drinking and revelry. He steps up between Alexander’s thighs and wraps strong arms around his waist. “Could go with you to the airport.”

“Nah,” he waves him off, and accepts the quick peck to the lips. “And Neddy said he’s going to grab a cab anyway so I’ll just stay here.” He kisses John once more, a little deeper, and then pushes him back so he can hop down off the counter and see them off. “Have fun with… who’d you say you’re meeting up with?”

Angelica pulls him into a one-armed hug that’s dangerously close to being more of a headlock on her way to the door. “Couple friends from my intern days stayed local. J.B. and C.J.”

“Those aren’t names.”

“Polly Jefferson, supposedly,” she continues, “though I’m pretty sure her presence at any of the places we might end up would be of dubiously legal standing.”

She’s a Jefferson – Alexander has little doubt she’ll have her bases covered, and talk her way out of any potential trouble that arises.

Eliza pulls him into a much gentler embrace and tells him quietly, “Mom and dad say hello, and that I should remind you you’re always welcome, even if your holidays are mostly spoken for otherwise.”

He gives her an extra squeeze. “Thanks.”

Peggy nearly tackles him on her way to catch up with her sisters, and plants a smacking kiss on his cheek. “Don’t be a stranger, Ham.”

“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

She grins, all wicked mischief, and ducks out the door.

Which just leaves John, who wraps his arms around Alexander from behind and nuzzles into the back of his neck. “See you in a few hours.”

“Stop being disgustingly cute in there and come  _ on _ , Laurens!” Peggy hollers. 

 

x---x

 

Alexander is cozily nested on the couch when Edward falls into the room a little over an hour later. He pokes his head up, throws a flippant wave over the back of the couch, and throws his phone on the coffee table. “Hey,” Edward muscles his suitcase over the threshold behind him. He drags it forward and glances around the quiet and otherwise empty space, taking stock the situation, and then peers down at Alexander with narrowed eyes. “Where’s John?”

“Schuyler sisters are in town. Peggy just turned twenty-one and is determined to raise hell.”

“Hm.” Edward continues to stare down at him, lips pursed, eyes assessing. “Hold on.”

The suitcase thumps across the floor as Edward drags it towards his room. There’s a grunt of exertion, the thud of his bag landing on the mattress, and a great deal of rustling cloth before he reemerges. Winter coat doffed, traded in for a pair of basketball shorts and a hoodie, a ridiculous pair of fuzzy red socks, and he throws a similar green pair at Alexander.

They thump against his chest, and he unfolds his hand from the nest of blankets around him to snatch them up and peer at them, brow raised questioningly. 

“Merry Christmas. Mom’s taken up knitting or… crocheting or… something. She says it’s for stress relief.”

“Are these for me, or are you just passing them on?”

Edward smacks his knee and Alexander draws his feet up so he can sit down at the far end of the couch, and then promptly wriggles his feet into his lap. “They’re for you, dork,” Edward answers, unfazed by the pile of foot and blanket encroaching on his space.

“Aw. Well, that’s nice. How is Ann, besides in need of stress relief?”

Edward thumps his head against the cushions and turns his gaze sideways. Fixes Alexander with a dull stare. “She’s dating.” A smile starts to creep quite involuntarily onto Alexander’s face. “Probably the source of the stress, let’s be honest.”

“Your mom has always done remarkably well unencumbered by… well…”

“People?” Edward suggests wryly, which Alexander might take for pointed nonchalance except he’s well aware that Edward made peace with his mother’s flighty nature a  _ very  _ long time ago. “So.” Fingertips dig into the arches of his feet and he hisses. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Why should something be wrong?”

The stare he gets in turn says so much, it’s incredible. The  _ I’ve known you for fifteen years, what do you think you’re trying to pull?  _ stare. “The Schuyler sisters are in town; you  _ adore  _ the Schuyler sisters; you are, instead, home and cocooned into a blanket.”

“I don’t -”

“There are three observable stages of  _ Alexander cocooned into a blanket  _ behavior,” Edward continues, like he’s reciting out of a biology text. “The first is wrapped in a blanket whilst sitting up and working, which means you are above averagely stressed. The second is wrapped in a blanket whilst staring up at the living room ceiling,” he glances pointedly upwards as he says it, “which means you are bothered by something and preoccupied. The third is wrapped in a blanket and moping in my bed, uninvited, which means you are fidgety and anxious.”

“If I’d known you were working on a full  _ Animal Planet  _ segment.”

“ _ Observations on a wild Hamilton _ .” Alexander kicks him in the thigh. “Seriously though – what’s up?”

He sighs. Shrugs dully, and levers himself to sitting, which makes Edward sigh because he knows Alexander’s only changing positions because he got called out about the habit. “Nothing. The usual. I don’t know.”

He can feel the hot gaze on him as he rubs his hands over his face. “You stay home because you didn’t feel like going out, or were you waiting for me?”

“Bit of both,” he admits readily enough. “I was going to call you a couple nights ago. Figured you were busy.”

“I’d have answered.”

“It was… about quarter to midnight, your time. New Year’s Eve.”  

“I… would  _ not  _ have answered,” Edward amends.

Alexander arches a brow. “Oh?”

“Remember Nora Hunter? She was in your year.”

He thinks back; remembers a sharp sense of humor and some (mostly) lighthearted competitiveness over grades. “Sure. She was nice. Smart.” He pauses. “Cute.”

“She is still all of those things, with emphasis on cute.”

“Did you usher in the new year with a  _ bang _ ?”

“Are you twelve.” Alexander grins. “And yes, I did.”

“Nice.”

So he tells him about the call with Lucia. And then tells him about Charleston, and his word-vomit conversation with Henry. And then tries to soften the whole saga with his reassuring meeting with Washington just before his New Year’s party experience went quickly downhill.

Edward listens. Listens while they sit there on the couch, and listens while he goes to the kitchen behind them to retrieve some water and some snacks after a long day traveling, and he listens while Alexander flops back down on the couch the other direction, his legs hanging off the arm and the top of his head pressed against the side of Edward’s leg.

There’s a considerable pause once he’s run out of things to say. Not an uncomfortable silence, but it makes him a little edgy – wondering which aspect of his winter misadventures Edward will hone in on.

After a minute, he shifts a little more sideways and peers down at Alexander’s face. “Can I ask you something?”

“…sure…” He keeps his eyes fixed on the blank television screen.

“What is it that you’re afraid of?”

“What do you mean?” His voice sounds too determinedly even, even to his own ears.

Edward shrugs. “I dunno, man. Are you  _ ever  _ going to know what to do about James until you actually  _ see  _ him again?”

“…no.”

It’s quiet again until he drags his gaze back up to Edward’s curious, searching look. “And you’ve known that for a while, I think.” Alexander lets out a noisy exhale, but doesn’t deny the assertion. “So why not just go? Pick a weekend. You can fly direct to Miami; meet up for coffee. Hell, probably fly back the same damn day.”

“Maybe I’m just afraid I’ll actually  _ want _ to be a part of his life; want him to be a part of mine.”

He’s not entirely sure where those words come from; he’s never let that thought fully form even inside his own head, let alone voiced it to anyone else.

“Anger is easy,” Edward allows. “Forgiveness is harder.”

Alexander sits sharply upright at that; startles Edward backwards, and he runs his hands over his face and breathes a soft, “ _ Fuck _ ,” before standing up, blanket and all, and walking away.

“Uh.”

Instead of taking the stairs up to his and John’s room though, he slips into Edward’s room and collapses on the bed.  _ Stage three _ , he supposes, listening to the soft footfalls of Edward’s fuzzy socks a few seconds behind him before he drapes himself heavily over Alexander’s back. “I’d go with you, you know,” he says, chin tucked on his shoulder and voice rumbling straight in his ear. “I guess I never offered that before. I’m sorry.”

“You hate James,” he points out, voice muffled against a pillow.

“Yeah, my feelings don’t really count here, though.”

Alexander huffs out a reluctant chuckle and rolls to dislodge Edward from his back. He turns so they’re face-to-face. Can’t count the number of times they laid like this as kids, up late whispering when they were supposed to be asleep, scheming the next day’s adventures. A few years later, trying to make sense of his father leaving, of his brother’s sudden anger and bouts of unprovoked cruelty.

A few years after that, the silent nights when he caved to the need for some companionship, some reminder that he was not as alone in the world as he once feared. They were older then, too old and too big to share such cramped quarters, but Edward had born it as well as any other adjustment that came with his abrupt shift at fifteen from single child to foster brother. Had shrugged it off when his queries went unanswered and shifted and shared his space as readily as when they were children.

“Thank you,” he says finally.

_ For all of it _ , he means. 

 

x---x

 

By the time John comes back home just after midnight, he’s rallied and extracted himself from Edward’s bed, Edward having fallen asleep not long after relocating, exhausted by a day of travel and a time zone behind besides.

John finds him upstairs in bed, messing around on his phone. A quick once-over reveals his boyfriend to be a bit giggly but otherwise none the worse for wear, the faintest taste of alcohol lingering on his breath when he leans in to press a sloppy kiss to Alexander’s lips.

“You look like you had fun,” he observes, letting his eyes rove unapologetically up and down John’s form as he strips out of tight jeans and a gray button-up. “The girls make it home?  _ Home _ ,” he amends with air-quotes.

He nods, and then giggles some more before disappearing into the adjoined bathroom clad only in a pair of boxer-briefs.

“I have  _ seen things _ ,” he confesses to Alexander two minutes later, breath now smelling like mint that’s trying to cover up the smell of alcohol.

Alexander snatches up his phone charger, plugs it in, slaps it down on the nightstand, and gives John his undivided attention. “Share.”

“Peggy Schuyler.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And Polly Jefferson.”

“Yeah.”

There’s a pause, and John adds, “ _ Dancing _ ,” like it’s some great scandalous matter.

After a moment waiting for elaboration and getting none, Alexander prompts him, “Yeah…?” John cocks his head, confused. “Isn’t that like – the point of going out to clubs?”

“Dancing  _ together _ .” Alexander just shakes his head, baffled. “Dirty, dirty dancing, Alex, you don’t understand.”

“I… do not understand, no,” he concedes.

“They’re the little sisters!” John exclaims. “They aren’t supposed to grow up and take shots and grind on dance floors!”

He renews his mental vow to never, ever tell John about his treehouse conversation with Maggie back in Charleston. “Are they like… a  _ thing _ ?”

The indignation seeps out of John’s body and he slumps into his pillow with a huff of laughter. “I don’t know. Angie and ‘Liza seemed a bit unclear on the point, too.”

“What a match, though.”

“Right?” John drags him in, hands wriggling around his waist, lips working across his shoulder, up his neck, and he shivers when they drag across the sensitive spot below his ear. “Neddy get in alright?”

“Mm, yeah. Passed out a while ago.”

“Mm. Passed out sounds nice.” He slumps against Alexander’s chest, hair tickling his nose. “Oh,” he remembers after a moment. “If you’re game, we can go get breakfast at their hotel Saturday morning before they catch the train back north.”

“’kay.”

“If not, two of the three of them will be at Burr’s wedding in April, so we’ll see them there.”

Alexander glances down and smiles wryly. “Two of the three?”

“Fuck if I remember which two it was now.”

He chuckles. Pulls back to he can lean down to kiss John’s forehead and whisper, “Go to sleep, Laurens.”

John’s breathing evens out soon enough thereafter, and Alexander follows readily enough, feeling just a little bit lighter than he has in weeks. 

 

x---x

 

They do manage to meet up with the whole Schuyler clan on Saturday morning. It feels like a nice way to cap off the vacation that otherwise was perhaps not as relaxing as he might have hoped, but he can’t really deny that part of him is looking forward to returning to the routine, the structure of work. However unpredictable and sometimes chaotic it might feel on the day-to-day.

On their way towards the table on the far side of the lobby where Eliza and Peggy are sitting with Philip and Catherine, they spy Angelica huddled over coffee with a man about her age or a little older. She nods at them as they pass, but doesn’t immediately move to join them with the rest of the family.

“He was out with us the other night,” John murmurs. “C.J.? J.B.? B.J.? Oh my  _ God _ , how much did I have to drink?”

“So,” Alexander nudges Peggy once he’s exchanged obligatory greetings with the parents, who reiterate Eliza’s invitation that he’s always welcome back in Albany for future holiday or non-holiday needs. “I hear you had a fun night.”

“Too fun, I think I lost the  _ hungover on the Senate floor  _ contest.” Philip shoots her an exasperated glance, and Alexander dearly hopes there are pictures. Then she pitches her voice lower and murmurs, “Polly got in trouble though. If she weren’t heading back to school tomorrow, I’d be worried she’d murder her father before he has a chance to finish out his time at State.”

John leans in on her other side. “Well  _ that  _ sounds like a story I want to hear.”

“Meh,” she waves him off. “Not really. Crossed some wires, thought he was spending one more night in Charlottesville and turned up at his place here a bit too inebriated to pass off.”

“I… won’t lie,” Alexander confesses, “Jefferson strikes me the type to not care so long as she didn’t get busted while she was out.”

Eliza smiles drily at them and joins in to the conversation that Philip and Catherine are doing their level best to pretend they can’t overhear. “And  _ that  _ is, in Polly’s eyes, how he would have treated the situation with Marty. They’ve never had… the  _ best  _ of relationships, Polly and her father.”

He wants to ask. He wants to, but he can’t really justify his curiosity beyond that of idle gossip, and so he doesn’t – because if there’s one thing he appreciates, it’s people  _ not  _ prying into the particular dysfunction of  _ his  _ family circumstances, and the Schuylers as a whole have been especially good at the  _ not prying _ while taking him into their home for their family gatherings year after year.

So instead he asks: “Where does Polly go to school?” 

Eliza laughs; an unusually sharp sound. “ _ Not  _ UVA, which was yet another source of contention two years ago.”

“Let me guess – Marty went the legacy route and stayed close to home.”

“Got it in one.”

“We’re all just a bunch of maladjusted political kids at heart,” Peggy winks at her dad. “Some of us more maladjusted than others.”

“Hear, hear,” John raises his cup of orange juice in solidarity.

Angelica joins them not long after, and they sit and chat for a long time, until Catherine looks pointedly at her husband’s watch and notes the time ticking down to their train out of Union Station. “Do come see us the next time you’re in New York,” she tells Alexander as they prepare to part ways by the elevator. “I’m sure life keeps you busy.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” he promises, feeling himself blush a little when she fusses over his and John’s hats and tucks their scarves in to their collars, and then pulls them in one by one to kiss their foreheads before sending them off.

John laughs at his pink cheeks as they duck back out into the frosty morning air. “Starting to feel a little bad now about depriving them of your company and vice versa for Christmas.”

“Nah,” he loops his arm through John’s as they set off for the metro station. “Charleston was good; I had you.”

“Sap.” 

 

And in the most remarkable bout of coincidence, he finds an email from his boss waiting for him upon their return home.

_ Sender: G.Morris.nec@whitehouse.gov  _

_ Recipient: A.Hamilton.nec@whitehouse.gov  _

_ Subject: fiscal summit _

_ Alexander –  _

_ I’m going to be in NYC for this year’s summit the weekend of Feb 15-17.  _

_ Bowen is struck with a sudden family obligation – can I interest you in taking her place in the wholly thankless job of accompanying me and keeping me organized and on-schedule?  _

_ If not, Johnson will go, but you know the city so I’ll give you first dibs.  _

_ We can talk it over Monday. _

_ -Vern _

_ sent: 10:37 01/04/25 _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all the love thus far, everyone. We're right in the middle here and at a good pause point I think, but hopefully I shall be up and running as planned in fairly short order.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for your patience, folks. 
> 
> I hit a patch of real-life stress a scene away from being done with chapter 17. And then my computer had an update issue.  
> The stress is better, chapter 17 is done, though I'm still battling on the computer front BUT I shall do my best to persevere and not leave you hanging again.

The month of January passes in a haze of renewed vigor after the winter recess. As Lafayette predicted, the tumult of the new congressional class lets the press move on from their brief interest in the audit project. Alexander keeps an eye and an ear out for the reporters who sent queries to the press office, politely declines any questions over email with one and, in a rather unsettling moment, in person from another as he’s leaving the premises.  

John goes wide-eyed and incredulous when Alexander relays that tale once he gets home. They hover together over a laptop and look up the publication in question, decide it’s just a D.C. gossip column more than anything, trying to find a new angle on the  _ Buzzfeed  _ scoop, and then have a good chuckle over Alexander’s newfound celebrity.

If it weren’t for the nagging, unsettling suspicion that his brother and Lucia will see anything that gets published with his name on it, he’d find the whole thing mildly entertaining. But yet unable to make the final leap and just  _ go _ , Edward’s offer to accompany and all of the hilarious, awkward glory that would entail, there’s something sharp and vulnerable in the idea that  _ now _ , knowing what they do, they can find traces of his life since leaving Saint Croix whether he wants them to or not.

_ Spec  _ staff listings at Columbia, departmental honors. The  _ Pulitzer  _ ceremony, his name listed among Olivia’s team.

Lafayette’s wedding, and that’s the hardest one of all to explain – the one that’s kept the tabloids curious, according to Washington. He’s still not sure how he became mistakenly identified in one as a Hill  _ intern _ , and it’s good enough cover to stave off questions about having been a  _ page _ , a pronouncement that’s met with a certain amount of ready suspicion and teasing questions to which he can offer no honest denials.

The problem is that anyone who knows his age – which is anyone who cares to, now – can figure out damn quick that he was only sixteen when Washington was elected president and therefore could never have known him as a senator during his college years.

So he says nothing, and lets the interest fizzle out and move on to new things, which would be phenomenal if those new things weren’t Jefferson’s retirement (again) and Madison’s  _ Beltway Nostradamus  _ line. The two years of silence from the blog only served to add an element of intrigue that grates on Alexander’s nerves every time he sees mention of it, not least because there’s nothing he can do or say to shut down the speculation.

On the other hand, it also seems to grate on Jefferson’s nerves when even foreign press during his trips abroad start asking about potential 2026 presidential aspirations, so that’s an upside.

For Edward and John, the start of spring semester brings about a reprieve from the long weeks of their internal med rotation. Morning hours in the psychiatry department, both of them usually done on site by early afternoon, and easily able to catch up on any work by the time Alexander comes rolling in around six in the evening.

He tries not to get too accustomed to having his morning coffee with John again, or finding the two of them laughing in the kitchen in the evening and making an absolute mess of some experimental dinner recipe, but it’s fun while they can.

Alexander wraps up his work an hour early the day before he’s due to head to New York with Morris, and he takes the extra time to cover some last minute correspondence geared towards locking down all of the moving parts with some visiting he wants to accomplish with barely forty-eight hours in the city. He’s got Eliza and Peggy penciled in for a drink in the hotel bar the evening following the summit, with his regrets to Catherine that he won’t have time to visit upstate.

Olivia will actually be  _ covering  _ the event, so he’ll fit in some visiting with her for the first time since he passed through the city on his way to Albany the Christmas prior.

Which leaves him juggling two  _ very  _ busy individuals at Columbia, each a mentor of sorts in rather different ways, and trying to find a time to pop in and take a few minutes to catch up on a Friday afternoon.

 

_ To: A.Hamilton.nec@whitehouse.gov _

_ From: Paine.Thomas@columbia.edu _

_ Subject: Re:re:re:re: Friday 2/15 _

_ Supposedly (supposedly) this is the real, final, come hell or high water decision from on high, and the ever-important department meeting, without which we cannot possibly soldier on, will be at 2:15. _

_ They usually last ~30 mins; no more than 60, lest we begin staging a revolt and gathering staplers and fountain pens to storm the chair’s office and lay waste to his diplomas, accolades, and shelves full of his own books proudly on display. _

_ All of this to say – if you want to come by around 3, I shall leave my office open in case we run over. _

_ p.s. I regret to inform you that the reliably excellent coffee cart in Forge has fallen under new management; however, the café in the basement of Union has been on the upswing, and feel free to take this as a hint, my tastes have not changed. _

_ sent: 02/14/25 13:09 _

 

And with far less flair:

 

_ To: A.Hamilton.nec@whitehouse.gov _

_ From: Jay.John@columbia.edu _

_ Subject: Re:re: Friday 2/15 _

_ Alexander – I have a free block from 11-11:20 and another from 3:45-4:10. _

_ Suspect the first is too early, I’ll pencil you in for the afternoon, do let me know. _

_ -J.Jay _

_ sent: 02/14/25 11:18 _

 

Unfortunately close together, especially if Paine’s meeting runs over, but even just a quick sit-down with Dr. Jay will give him a chance to vent about the last two months of silent frustration about Publius, so he writes back with a quick affirmative to both.

He catches Morris in his office on his way out the door. “See you on the train?”

“Eight thirty,” his boss reminds him, frowning contemplatively at something on his computer. “You call the hotel?”

“Yeah, we can leave our luggage with the desk until check-in. Wander unencumbered. Raise hell. Day  drink.”

Morris shoots him a reproving look with no actual heat behind it. “Pace yourself, Alexander, the summit itself is largely an excuse to get sloshed under the guise of  _ networking _ .”

“ _ Now  _ you tell me.” He grins, smacks the door frame as he turns to leave, and affirms, “Eight thirty.”

 

He goes out with John and Edward that night. Somewhat ironically, given that it’s Valentine’s Day, but the coffee bar where they end up – emphasis on  _ bar,  _ after seven – has a fairly typical mix of the neighborhood nightlife, college kids and young professionals with a smattering of tourists hovering about the entrance and looking unsure about seating and reservations while the locals muscle their way in for any space they can carve out in the crowded place.

John makes the first trip to the bar and comes back bearing a perfectly normal looking beer for himself and a couple of over-the-top cocktails for Alexander and Edward, poorly suppressed cackles threatening to send the precariously-perched drinks spilling over his hands.

“Jesus,” Edward comments cheerfully, popping the slice of pineapple garnish from the rim of the glass into his mouth.

Alexander takes a tentative sip. “Why.”

“Because your reaction to the name and composition of this concoction is going to get me through the weekend.” Edward leans in attentively. “Orange juice. Coconut. Crucian rum.”

“Ahh,” Edward winks, and takes a longer sip. “A taste of home.”

Alexander rolls his eyes. “What’s it called?”

John holds his eyes for a beat and tells him, deadpan, “A  _ Bali Blast _ .”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Edward takes hold of the back of his shirt and prevents him from rising out of his seat, and so he’s reduced to shouting into the chaos of music and laughter around them, “Saint Croix and Bali are  _ actually _ , completely, on opposite sides of the world, you knuckleheads!” And then he takes another sip and pauses, looks down. “Is that cinnamon?”

“Knew you’d come ‘round.”

They’re working their way through their second round and a tray of nachos when a young woman leans in at their table between John and Edward and snags a chip. Dunks it in salsa with a bright grin before anyone can quite manage to react.

And then John and Edward both get their wits about them at precisely the same moment. “Hester!” Edward wraps an arm around her waist and pulls her into an affectionate side hug.

“Boys.” She steals another chip, and perches carefully on the arm of Edward’s chair. “Who’s the cutie?”

It takes Alexander a drawn-out moment to realize that  _ he  _ is, in fact, the cutie. “Spoken for,” John informs her, and leans over to plant a smacking kiss on Alexander’s cheek.

He flips John off and reaches across the table. “Alexander Hamilton,” he calls over the noise.

“Hester Amory.”

“Are you a fellow med school masochist, then?”

She nods, nearly slides off the chair, and then compensates by dusting off her leggings and promptly sitting in Edward’s lap instead.

“Had a few?” Edward asks, mildly wide-eyed and looking like he can’t quite believe his luck.

“I could use one more.” She catches sight of a server and nods, orders a coffee which turns into four and some completely incongruous egg rolls, and Alexander decides right then and there that Edward has his blessing. “So,” she fixes a level stare across the table, and he sits up straighter in anticipation of the interrogation. “You shacked up with these two dorks?”

He bites his lip on the laugh. “Uh… yeah, if that’s how you wanna… okay.”

“Edward was the best lab partner I ever had,” she reminisces fondly, and Alexander really just cannot contain his delight at seeing his forever unruffled friend and foster brother go pink in the cheeks. “Crazy son of a bitch. Drove the instructors  _ nuts _ .” She digs an elbow into Edward’s shoulder. “And then these two jerks snatched up as many rotation slots together as they could manage and I’ve barely seen either since the summer.”

“Well, if we’re ever all off at the same time again, you should come hang out and give him some more grief about it, we live a few blocks away.”

Which doesn’t much help Edward’s wide-eyed state. “Lucky,” Hester sighs. “Oh!” She jumps up and darts for a newly-abandoned chair at the next table over, dragging it over and wedging it in between Edward and Alexander at their tiny round table that was probably only supposed to seat two to begin with. “I live near the campus. It’s so goddamn boring.”

Their coffees show up. Hester – who has entirely abandoned a large tableful of girlfriends halfway across the room, as far as Alexander can tell – reaches over him and snags a sugar canister. “So what do you do, Alexander?”

There’s a complicated answer to that question, and an easy answer to that question.

He opts for easy.

“I work with numbers.”

“Damn,” Hester shakes her head. Clinks her spoon against the rim of her mug and sits it on the saucer. Leans back in her chair, mug cupped in both hands and muses, “That sounds  _ so  _ much less stressful than working with sick people all damn day.”

John chokes on a laugh and nearly spills his coffee.

x---x

He’s on time, not hungover, and surprisingly well rested when he finds Morris on the platform at 8:22 the next morning. “Our itinerary for tomorrow,” his boss hands him a piece of paper. “We can go over it on the train.”

Which they start to do, and then at some point Morris gets up to grab something from the dining car, and Alexander wakes up an hour later with a cup of cold coffee on his fold-down tray table and his boss watching him bemusedly overtop this week’s  _ Economist _ . “Late night?”

“Comfy train,” he counters with a yawn. “Business class  _ is  _ worth the extra penny.”

They get a taxi from Penn Station, and the stop-and-go crawl to their hotel takes them past the  _ Evening Post  _ offices. Morris catches him staring out the window as they pass by. “Are you going to ride out a presidential transition after next year’s election? Or will you return to the illustrious world of journalism?”

John Adams is almost assuredly going to be the Federalist nominee. Washington’s popularity makes it difficult to envision the Democratic-Republicans fielding a successful opposition, though if anyone’s got a shot, it’s probably Jefferson – who is still playing decidedly coy about his latest career move and future intentions.

“I can’t really imagine staying on staff. I don’t know. It’s not like I even studied journalism, I don’t know if I see going back to that, either.” And then he tells Morris wryly, “I worry sometimes that I’ll look back at my life only to realize that I peaked by my mid-twenties.”

“Alexander, you have George Washington in your corner, you can do whatever the hell you  _ want  _ after his term is up.”

Probably not wrong, albeit not exactly what he wants to hear, but he knows Morris means well. “It sounds lame if I say I might just wait another year and see where residency takes John. Assess my options from there.”

Still a stressful answer in and of itself because it forces him to consider the likelihood that John and Edward’s paths will diverge when that time comes.  
  


They part ways after lunch, with plans to meet up for check-in back at the hotel at five. Alexander finds himself at the Columbia campus with nearly forty minutes to spare, so he heads to the coffee shop Paine indicated and settles into the last leather armchair available, sipping a latte and watching students swing through between classes with a keen bout of nostalgia.

When he shows up at Paine’s office and knocks awkwardly with his elbow, hands occupied by a black coffee to wash down the latte and a mocha for his sweet-toothed former professor, there’s no response. But the door is unlocked as promised, and so he tucks one cup in the crook of his elbow and pushes his way in and makes himself comfortable.

He spent enough time in this office during his last two semesters that he recognizes what’s changed, what’s stayed the same, even after more than three years. There’s an organized sort of clutter to the space, a shelf overflowing with books on politics and policy, and some interests less directly related to the courses Paine teaches. A couple of stacked folders he peeks at, nosy, with essays waiting to be graded from his undergrads.

A Princeton Ph.D diploma on the wall, and a framed photo of Paine standing in the Oval Office with Senator Paterson and President Hancock. A picture on the desk of his wife, Beth.

A brochure catches his eye, sticking out of a stack of mail, and after hanging his coat on the hook on the back of the door, he settles in behind the desk and picks it up. Takes a slow and careful sip of hot coffee and considers the black and orange of the Princeton shield before opening it.

Some sort of alumni fundraiser, at a glance. He skims the message from the university president, the pages full of bragging about new programs at the school, the latest accolades among the faculty, Rhodes Scholars, campus expansion plans.

Information for a summer alumni dinner that costs a, frankly, obscene donation per seat, and then the last several pages of the pamphlet are dedicated to listing the most generous alumni in what Alexander can only assume is meant to be a display of a combination of public bragging and shaming.

Right at the top is the Burr Family Foundation, because of course, with the Livingston family not far below. He skims for familiar names and sees more than a few congressfolk. Isn’t surprised to see Senator Paterson’s name, and Madison, and even the Paines themselves.

His lips quirk in wry bemusement when he catches one other name, and then the door is opening and he glances up as Paine, looking  _ very  _ done for the week, comes in.

Alexander nods at the cup on the edge of the desk and looks at the time.  _ 3:08 _ . “Cutting it fine on that whole  _ storming the chair’s office  _ thing, aren’t you?”

“You look like you’re making yourself comfortable in my absence.” But Alexander is already rising out of the chair and circling the desk, and they do that awkward sort of handshake, half-hug thing, where the handshake seems too distant but the full hug seems too familiar. “Keeping entertained with…” he stares down at the discarded brochure and laughs. “The rich assholes of Princeton University?”

Alexander settles into one of the visitor chairs set on the other side of the desk. “I couldn’t help but notice that  _ you  _ are listed among the rich assholes of Princeton University.”

Paine collapses into his chair and takes a long sip of his drink. “I never felt guilty about that until they offered me tenure here.”

He grins and reaches for the booklet again. “I’m trying to decide if I’m surprised or not that the school still takes Thomas Conway’s money.” He skims the page again and shakes his head. “But I suppose one has to begin rebuilding connections somewhere.” Pause. “Not sure a college campus is entirely ideal in that particular situation, mind you.”

Paine lets out an incredulous laugh. “There was at least a  _ show _ of internal debate over the matter, if that makes it any better.” And then he changes the topic with a swiftness that makes Alexander glance back at the donor list and see that only a couple of years separate the two men’s graduating classes, and he remembers that is precisely why he declined to take Paine’s class the first time their paths crossed. “So – you’re here to schmooze with the who’s who of corporate execs and Wall Street financiers.”

“My boss is here to schmooze, think I’m mostly here to hold his coat.”

“Vern Morris, right?”

He nods. “Yeah – you know him?”

“Just by reputation. He was still with the Provincial Group when I left D.C.”

“He’s a good guy. Exacting standards but not unreasonable ones.”

Paine tips his cup in his direction. “By  _ your  _ measure.”

“Hey now.”

“I am simply saying, I have never seen such a tornado of productivity in an undergrad either before you came along or since you’ve left.” He shrugs, attempts to appear modest. “I’m guessing you made a quick impression in the White House, too, considering the  _ second  _ job for which you are now decidedly more famous.”

“Oh, God.” It occurs entirely too belatedly that he’d name-dropped Paine during his final rant. “Infamous, perhaps, but the president hasn’t booted me yet, so.”

They sit and chat and drink their coffees. Work, and D.C. and New York, Paine’s latest research undertakings and journal submissions awaiting review or publication.

His latest research assistants, back to the days of expending more time helping students hone their research skills than they actually contribute to helping him; which, to be fair, is more the point of the assistantship program.

Alexander just grins cheekily and offers his consolations.

At 3:35, he apologizes for the rather abbreviated meeting. “I had one other sit-down I was trying to jam in this afternoon on campus, and of course, you were both available within an hour of one another.”

“All the better for you – if we were still going at four, I was going to make you help mark essays.” He gives the clock on the wall an exaggerated glance and rises sharply from his seat. Paine laughs and shakes his head. “Should I be jealous? Who else is demanding your attentions?”

“Ah.” He doesn’t really see a viable path out of answering the question, but he knows it’ll pique Paine’s curiosity. “Um. Dr. Jay, actually.”

Paine stares for a moment. “I don’t know why I’m surprised.”

“I do get around.”

He just shakes his head and waves him on. And offers as Alexander is donning his coat, “If you’re not spoken for this evening, you should come ‘round for dinner. Beth would enjoy seeing you again.”

“I might be free. Meeting Morris at our hotel at five, I’ll let you know?”

“Just shoot me a text.”

He winds his way back through familiar hallways deep in the maze of the international and public affairs departments, manages to exit the building on the wrong side through sheer muscle memory of heading towards his old dorm instead, and then circles around the law school and crosses the street to the library that had become like a second home during his two years at Columbia.

And on the second floor – tucked away enough that students who didn’t already  _ know  _ it was there generally missed it entirely – was the suite of offices dedicated to the university president.

He has to wait a minute, at the bidding of a new secretary he doesn’t recognize, but then Jay ushers him in with a warm smile and a handshake, closes the door, motions him to a seat, settles in behind his desk, clasps his hands on top of it, fixes Alexander with a challenging stare, and says:

“So – tell me about Congressman Madison.”

And  _ finally _ , after the better part of two months, he has the opportunity to unload the whole convoluted saga. “When I posted the FEC filings question more than three years ago?”

Jay nods slowly; contemplatively. “You said an interested party pointed you in that direction; that was Madison?”

“He didn’t so much point as shove them in my face. And he said nothing more about the blog until his little display at VCU at Christmas, but…” He rubs wearily at his temples and slumps a bit in his seat. “He gave me a heads-up about the committee hearing just before Christmas. And in light of _that_ particular spectacle, I guess he thought a more… _pointed_ warning for Publius was merited.”

There are holes in that story, he knows. Holes Jay seems to be picking through, eyes narrowed, thoughtful, but he simply settles on, “Madison thinks Jefferson’s going to run; he wants to make sure Publius stays sidelined.”

“If anyone would know for sure, it’d be Madison but… yeah, that was my takeaway.”

“Can I ask the obvious?” He nods, resigned more than anything. “Why did you tell Madison in the first place?”

“Would you believe I didn’t?” A single brow arches, skeptical. “Look, sir,” he sighs. “I’m not dumb. You’re  _ certainly  _ not dumb, and I know you made your deductions by the time I packed it in and returned to D.C.”

“Ah.”

“Madison… had the dubious honor of being the person I trusted most after John Andre and Benedict Arnold tried – and succeeded, really – in getting rid of me.” To Jay’s credit, he doesn’t offer much of a reaction. Just a slow nod, understanding without putting on a show of sympathy. “The Ethics Committee didn’t touch much of it besides the emails we exchanged, but there’s a… frankly embarrassingly long document floating around somewhere still, I imagine. Chronicling… everything.”

“A brave thing to do, in your position.”

He doesn’t know how to respond to that, so he mostly just glances down at his shoes and ignores it. “From what he said a few years later, I guess Madison was pretty much the keeper of that document through the  whole fiasco.”

It occurs to him very suddenly, very starkly, that he truly does have no idea what became of that packet of papers he’d shoved at Madison on their way to the airport, barely containing the steady thrum of panic in his head, his lungs, and desperate to get on his plane and get away from it all. Surely some form of it got filed with whatever other documentation went along with the investigation, but he assumes the original would have been kept unaltered. Destroyed, perhaps?

Not a question he’ll be asking Madison anytime soon, anyway.

And it’s strangely… liberating, in its way. To just own up to it,  _ intentionally _ , unlike with Henry. To realize that Jay isn’t looking at him any differently, whether or not the suspicion had crossed his mind two, three, however many years ago. And even with Henry – the man had been surprised, sure, but Alexander had caught no whiff of the underlying  _ judgment  _ he would have certainly assumed from him in years past.

It’s been…  _ Christ _ , it’s been seven years. Maybe – just maybe – there’s a time on the horizon where it’ll be little more than a curious piece of trivia. No longer a secret constantly gnawing at him, a secret he fears can be divined simply through some curious expression on his face, some stuttered answer during a congressional interview.

It’s been seven years, and it occurs to him as he thinks about the long hours killing himself at this school taking outsized course loads while working for the  _ Spec  _ and running his blog on the side; the late nights combing through endless pages of data for Olivia’s  _ Pulitzer _ winning investigation; the ready agreement to take on the extra work from Colonel Mercer – it occurs to him as he considers the looming question mark of what the future holds, that maybe, just maybe, he can finally stop running so damn fast.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fools who run their mouths off...

By the beginning of March, Alexander thoroughly regrets Publius’s snide potshot at Jefferson three years earlier. It’s not even so much that the _Beltway Nostradamus_ remains in the news, as the fact that the conversation it’s inspired as they close in on Jefferson’s resignation, whether he engaged in it or not, seemed to spark something of a _go-ahead_ for those considering next year’s presidential primary.

Not Madison’s intention, he’s pretty sure, not least judging by the increasing frustration Jefferson is reportedly feeling at _not_ being allowed to drift quietly into the background once more. After Washington won the last election effectively unopposed, save an underfunded, token ticket, and with legislative minorities to boot, the democratic-republicans are chomping at the bit to get their names in the mix as potential 2026 contenders during the remaining few weeks while his position as Secretary of State keeps Jefferson effectively under a campaign-related gag order.

New York’s Senator Clinton’s announcement of an _exploratory committee_ is quickly followed by Governor Gunn of Georgia. Anticipating certain inevitables on the Federalist side brings South Carolina’s surprisingly popular Governor Pinckney into the mix, unwilling to cede the party entirely to John Adams’s brand of New England partisanship.

Which, in turn, obliges Adams to begin staking out some of the ground he’s been laying claim to since the earliest days of Senate wheeling and dealing with Washington and the Federalist party’s reluctant acceptance that their full embrace of a powerful independent who agreed with their caucus _most_ of the time but would not be managed was their best bet towards longer-term power across the federal government.

Not a bad bet in theory, but Alexander has never understood the party pinning its future _after_ Washington on the likes of Adams, who may have been a shrewd legislator but lacks utterly the charisma, the sheer presence, the authority, that help Washington command the office. In fairness, he supposes that Charles Pinckney doesn’t understand it either, but nor can he accept that the southern Federalist hopes to gain much besides dragging the primary discourse closer to the center. Vice president or not, a President Adams would be a drastic philosophical shift after eight years of Washington’s measured pragmatism.

However it plays out, by the middle of March the situation stands thus: John Adams is scheduling outings to New Hampshire and high profile charity fundraisers up and down the eastern seaboard. Clinton and Gunn are pulling their punches towards the administration, because as much as the party establishment largely mistrusts Jefferson, his connection to Washington’s popularity will be their biggest asset in trying to flip the White House, should he decide to run – and there’s a limit to coy, with each refusal to offer a direct answer to that question.

Washington’s input into the next election cycle, should he decide to offer it, would also be largely neutralized if it came down to a race between his vice president and his secretary of state.

So Adams starts gearing up the campaign machine while Jefferson keeps his head down and – presuming Alexander is right, and has been right all along – re-strategizes after his plan to step in much later as a unifying force was inadvertently thwarted by Publius’s regained popularity.

Publius’s words notwithstanding, Alexander remains largely ambivalent. Feels bad for Lafayette, who just groans and waves off his questions during one weekend lunch over at their house with John and Edward. Suspects that Lafayette probably floated Jefferson in the first place for the State job after Pickering’s departure, given their history at the United Nations together, and is perhaps a bit taken aback by the suggestion of his old friend having calculated the maneuver all the way back to his resignation.

“Why did he resign in the first place?” Adrienne asks overtop her husband’s histrionics. “He was popular. He was the damn minority leader.”

“He didn’t care for _the direction the party was heading_ ,” Lafayette grouses with air-quotes, plopping a hunk of broccoli on Anastasie’s tray, which she promptly transfers to her sister’s. “I suppose simultaneously endorsing George really should have been what tipped his hand, but we were all so desperate for the party unity visual.”

Alexander cocks a wry smile. “Pretty sure everyone had a lot on their minds at the time; it says more about him, if he did indeed use the moment for such cynical political calculations, than it does about you or the president for not catching on.”

Virginie shoves the broccoli stalk in her mouth, shrieks in delight, and manages to flip her plate full of peas off her tray in her excitement.

 

x---x

He puts the final touches on the latest DoD audit report a couple of days before John and Edward’s spring break begins. After the week off, their schedules will finally diverge again, with John spending a couple of months in pediatrics and Edward in obstetrics, and something about the idea of Edward learning how to deliver babies delights and amuses Alexander to no end.

There’s an email waiting for him the next day from the _Evening Post_ ’s White House correspondent, who Olivia had put him in touch with during his New York visit.

“ _Will is…_ intense _, at a word_ ,” she’d warned. “ _He was peeved to learn that I’ve had a source ‘embedded in the White House’ since before he got the assignment last year._ ”

The fact that Alexander hadn’t acted as a source for anyone or anything since joining the NEC had no discernible effect on Legget’s enthusiasm, and so Alexander finds himself trekking upstairs to the press offices off the west colonnade at lunchtime. He gets twisted around in the cramped maze of mostly empty desks jammed together, and has to bother a severe-looking woman wearing a _D.C. Times_ lanyard for help. “Can you tell me where Will Legget works?”

She points imperiously towards the far corner of the room and returns to her computer.

“You know Colonel Mercer has a press liaison?” he asks as he approaches the desk.

“Alexander,” the man hops up, earnest, reaching out for his hand before his butt has even cleared the seat. “Can I call you Alex?”

“Uh. Sure.”

“Will Legget. Olivia speaks highly of you, and Coleman.”

Legget is already gathering up his laptop bag and press pass by the time Alexander formulates a suitable response to that. “It was a short but eventful time we spent working together.”

“What brought you down here?” Alexander blinks once, off-guard, before Legget assures him, “Off the record,” with a wink that only serves to heighten his unease.

“The irresistible call of public service,” he deadpans. “Where are you…?”

He’s already weaving his way through to the exit. “Thought we could chat over lunch.”

Months of trailing after Olivia, barely keeping up while she pushed her way through reluctant doors and wheedled information out of wary sources, he knows there’s a certain boldness that must go along with such a high profile reporting assignment. Having never found himself on the receiving end of that, however, he can’t help but be a little put off.

By the time he catches up, Legget is almost to the end of the colonnade, and he halts him before he can push through into the crowded west wing lobby. “You had a question about the February report?”

“I said I wanted to _chat_ about the February report,” Legget corrects mildly, drifting a few feet back along the exposed walkway. “Do you like the café in the EEOB?”

“I’m busy,” he frowns, tone probably snappier than intended.

He gets a strange smile. “Don’t you eat lunch?”

“I wouldn’t be where I am today if I bothered with lunch breaks,” he fires back drily, and only half-joking. “Is there something I can help you with? Now? Here?”

At least the man looks more bemused than offended as he shifts his weight and considers Alexander with a resigned shrug. “I’m guessing you’ll tell me to direct any questions about substance _behind_ the numbers to Mercer’s person?”

“That is correct.”

“When I write up my story about the one-year mark since Hugh Mercer was formally appointed to lead the audit effort, will you be willing to comment on the progress, structure, or politicization of his work?”

“I think I commented enough back in December to get us through at least the _next_ year, don’t you?”

Legget grins. “Can I quote you on _that_?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Can’t blame a reporter for trying.”

“You and Olivia have that same _battle-hardened on the streets of New York_ thing going, I feel for you.” He’s about to leave him for his solitary lunch (or to hunt down some other unsuspecting staffer) when it occurs to ask, “Hey, what was your beat in ‘twenty-one, ‘twenty-two? She said you were new to this gig but I don’t remember you in the city.”

“Upstate. Albany bureau.”

Alexander grins. “Escape for some adventure?”

Legget laughs as he turns away. “Kid, you need to spend some time around the statehouse, Albany is a veritable cesspool of corruption, greed, and grift. George Washington’s White House is boring by comparison.”

“On behalf of this White House, I will take that as a compliment.”

Legget sends a friendly wave over his shoulder as he disappears through the double doors, and Alexander supposes he didn’t fuck that up too terribly in the end. He pulls out his phone and sends a message to Olivia anyway.

_To: Olivia Wolcott_

_Think Legget may be a bit disappointed with my usefulness (or lack thereof)._

Then he waits as another reporter comes through, her head bowed in quiet conversation with the communications director. Humphreys nods absently to him as they pass, and Alexander slips by and into the lobby again.

He’s almost to the stairwell that’ll take him back down to the NEC suite when a raised voice catches his attention, and he turns and sees a young woman darting past the security cordon, pass shoved in an agent’s irritated face. “Mister Hamilton?” He pauses and blinks at her, pink flush high in her cheeks as she skids to a halt in front of him. “Alexander Hamilton, right?”

“Yes?”

“John Adams and Fisher Ames were asked during an event at the Boston Historical Society about the Defense Department audit, and also your testimony with Colonel Mercer back in December in front of Congressman Ames’s committee, and the vice president said that, quote, _the ends are important but there’s distinct room for improvement among the means_. Do you have any response to that?”

“I… am not even going to try to parse what the hell that means,” he frowns. “Sorry, you are…?”

“ _Oh_ ,” she straightens and sticks out her hand. “Sorry. Josephine Dennie. You can call me Josie.” Pause. “Or Dennie.”

“Can I call you Josie Dennie?”

“…I mean…”

The name catches up to him though, and he levels a finger at her even as they step aside for a tour group coming up the sweeping marble stairs. “Josephine Dennie. We’ve emailed. _Buzzfeed_ .” She looks faintly pleased to be recognized finally, and he glances down at her press pass. “ _Buzzfeed_ gets a seat in the briefing?”

She shrugs. “In the back corner. We’re pretty well at the bottom of the totem pole.”

“Being in the room is the important thing.” A smile lights up her face. It’s a much more honest eagerness in her face than Legget’s earnest ambition, and he wonders how long she’s been at the gig, doubts she’s more than a couple of years older than he is, if that. “Anyway, good to finally meet you.”

“We could have met in December if you’d talked to me about the committee hearing,” she points out with a cheeky grin. He realizes that this up-and-coming, thirsty to prove herself young woman can’t possibly know even a fraction of the angst that whole thing generated, but he’s still quick to shut her down when she says, “Hey, so while I have you, the _Capitol Scribe_ dug into the archives and pulled your name from the chief of staff’s wedding a few years back, and I don’t suppose -”

“Nope.”

“Okay,” she takes the rejection gracefully. “So then about the vice president…?”

“Look, Josie– my days are busy enough as is without allocating precious mental real estate towards whatever gripes John Adams is hashing out with the old boys’ club.”

A startled laugh escapes her. “Well, alright then.” She pulls out her phone and starts tapping away, gaze darting back and forth between the screen and his face. “Just so you know, the committee piece was really well-received. I know _Buzzfeed Politics_ isn’t exactly the height of prestigious journalism, but we’ve got a pretty loyal readership that likes young, smart, and funny people, and your clip came with the added bonus of making asshole congressmen look like the assholes they are.”

“Did you write the headline?” She nods. “ _Pulitzer_ -worthy, in my book at least.”

When she dashes away, the pink has returned to color her cheeks once more.

 

x---x

 

“Is this overdoing it?”

Alexander looks between John, sitting on the couch in a tight Henley with the top few buttons undone, and Edward hovering in their small kitchen in his button-up that’s at least sans tie. “Roll up the sleeves,” he offers after a moment of consideration. “And possibly just tape a sign to your forehead professing your undying love for one Hester Amory, fellow med student and excellent coffee connoisseur.”

Edward listens to the first half of his advice, anyway, grousing all the while, “I’m not that obvious.” Pause. “Am I?”

“She seemed pretty into you from what I saw,” Alexander answers instead of the question that was asked, while John just snickers at them in the background.

“Alas, sober Hester is much more restrained and proper.”

“Ain’t nothing wrong with proper restraints,” John calls from the sofa.

It takes Alexander a minute to even _get_ it, but Edward collapses in one of the counter stools and shakes his head mournfully. “I don’t want to know what kinky shit you two are into, come on.”

John snickers some more.

 

An hour later finds them in a sushi and hibachi restaurant in Foggy Bottom and being led straight back out again onto a back patio where a group of John and Edward’s classmates have reserved and taken over the space. Alexander has met a couple of them before in passing, but even before their days of long hours on different clinical schedules, John and Edward usually kept their extra-curriculars to coffee breaks between classes and study sessions ahead of their second-year boards.

He leans into John as they snag some empty chairs around the huge table they’ve formed by shoving a bunch of them together. “Are we here to relax and eat delicious sushi while you all bitch about rotations, or are we here because Neddy’s smitten and we want to watch?”

John considers it as he lowers himself into his seat and tosses a greeting wave at a couple of people hovering on the far side of the patio. “Bit of both?” he finally suggests. So they watch, entirely indiscreetly over the tops of their menus, while Edward sidles in with Hester and a couple of friends all already armed with drinks from the bar inside.

Hester gives him a glowing smile and a one-armed hug, drink held carefully in her other hand, and then resumes her conversation.

“This is going to be brutal to watch, isn’t it?” Alexander asks. John shrugs and hums amiably. “Poor Neddy; D.C. has been rough on him.”

John snorts. “Girls have lower standards in the territories?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Alexander points out primly, and gets a grin and a sloppy kiss on his cheek in return.

 

His agreement to actually accompany John and Edward on their spring break get-together came with the condition that no one could yell at him for sitting in the corner and looking at work emails when he inevitably got bored in a roomful of strangers.

That happens fairly quickly after they eat, which is a rowdy enough occasion in and of itself, no one sticking with what they actually ordered and all the different rolls getting passed around so everyone could take a piece or two to sample and move on. There’s a lot of story-telling, ranging from absurd visits to the emergency room to things Alexander would have to assume verge on medical malpractice from their supervising attendings.

Eventually though, he sits back while John and Edward drift off to carry on a heated debate with an old lab partner of John’s that began over lunch and looks to be continuing well into the drinking. Holding no especial opinion on experimental treatments for sepsis, or whatever they’re going on about, Alexander takes his beer and moves to one of the tables that has been abandoned as they all congregate in the middle of the patio.

He’s skimming an email from Morris clarifying a couple points from an analysis he submitted before the weekend, when the chair across from his scrapes across the concrete and a familiar face descends into view. “Hello, Alexander Hamilton who works with numbers.”

“Hello, Hester Amory who likes good coffee and steals people’s nachos.”

She grins and takes a long, slow sip of what does, indeed, appear to be more coffee. “You must be so bored right now.”

“Well, I always have my numbers. Besides,” he adds, “it’s only fair turnabout. They both got dragged along to lunch with one of my bosses last weekend, so.”

She shakes long hair out of her face and turns to look at where John and Edward are now red in the face laughing with their debate foe, Ben. And she sighs and asks, “How long have you guys been together?”

Trying to tone down the sappy smile as he thinks back on the wedding of that same boss with whom they’d all just dined, the wedding that finally, _finally_ , made him and John get their shit together and make that leap, he tells her, “Coming up on four years.”

“College?”

“Hm,” he abandons his phone and relaxes back in his seat. “No, we’d met a few years earlier, in high school.”

“All three of you?”

He blinks. “Wha-? No, Neddy and I grew up together, I met John during high school.”

“What’s a Neddy?”

“Edward.”

“Oh! Right, sorry.”

“It was actually wholly a coincidence that they both ended up here, they didn’t even know each other all that well beforehand. But it’s worked out really nicely.”

She smiles and glances back once more at the group where John and Edward are holding court. “That’s really sweet.” With all the wistful looks and quiet sighs, he has half a mind to just butt in and tell her that Edward’s usually more adept at the whole courtship thing and to just go for it, when the next words out of her mouth wipe any and all coherent thought from his mind for easily half a minute. “The three of you seem very happy together.”

He stares. Aware that he’s probably going a bit bug-eyed with no power whatsoever to control his expression, until her brows start to pull down in turn, concerned.

Her drunken question flits through his head – _You shacked up with these two dorks?_ – and horror and hilarity duel in equal measure as the realization hits him.

“Um,” he answers finally, eloquently. “Can you just – I’ll be right – hold on?”

“Uh… okay.”

And he ducks past a server and weaves around the long table, edges into the group where Ben has moved on to some tale about blowing up a chemistry lab as an undergrad and snags Edward’s arm and drags him to a quieter spot along the brick wall separating the patio from the little side alley that runs alongside the building.

“You alright?”

Alexander holds his eyes levelly, and tells him in the sternest voice he can muster, “Whatever you do, do not turn and look at Hester. I’m about to -” He grabs his shoulders and yanks until his head whips back around to face front. “Do _not_ look. I’m going to ask you a series of simple questions, answer them _yes_ or _no_.”

“Uh.”

“You and John scheduled almost all of your rotations together?”

“Yes.”

“And in the two years before that, you scheduled all of your classes together?”

“…Yeah? I mean, that only made sense, considering -”

“And between classes, you grabbed lunch or coffee or whatever together?”

“Sure...”

“Sometimes with classmates?”

“Alex, what the hell are you –? _Ow_ ,” he shakes out his stomped-on foot. “Yes, _Christ_.”

“Was Hester there?”

“…Sometimes…?”

He does his absolute best to school his expression to the utmost seriousness he can manage. “Okay. These next two are important.”

“I’m sure.”

“Did you and John maybe make a habit of like… alternating who paid?”

Edward shrugs. “I mean, yeah, probably?”

“Okay. Now – when your classmates ask you out to things like this,” he gestures around the crowd, “do they ask you individually? Or is it like – _hey, Edward, do you and John want to come out for sushi?_ ”

“What the _hell_ are you…? I really don’t spend a lot of time analyzing the phrasing our classmates use when they ask us…”

And he stops all of a sudden. Snaps his mouth closed, glances around… presses his lips together, exhales noisily through his nose, and beckons Alexander in closer so he can murmur quietly by his ear. “Does everyone in this room think I’m dating your boyfriend?”

“…Yeah, probably.”

“Ah ha.” He crosses his arms over his chest and sucks in a deep breath. Stares at the floor for a minute. “And where do _you_ fit into this equation.”

“I’m your other partner in a very cozy and content polyamorous arrangement, it would seem.”

“I see.” Some more brooding staring, and then: “’Cause when we ran into Hester at the bar in -”

“-on Valentine’s Day…”

“-on Valen – _Jesus Christ_. Right.” He sighs again. “Okay.” Visibly steels himself, and then takes Alexander by the shoulders and stares him straight in the eye. “I love you. You’ve been a great friend and brother for… about fifteen years now?” Alexander fights the grin threatening to take over his face and is only marginally successful. “But I’m going to have to go walk out into traffic now, excuse me.”

The laugh finally bursts out of him and he takes his forlorn friend and steers him around to march him back around the table, towards where Hester is sitting while Edward looks all the while like he’s being led off to the gallows. Right as he’s dumping him in the chair next to Hester, John wanders over to see what the commotion is.

“Right, so,” Alexander announces to the three of them. “This is going to be really embarrassing for all parties involved, but it’s going to be really fucking hilarious one day, looking back, so I’m just going to get it over with.”

A minute later, Edward’s got his face planted flat on the table, Hester has a hand clapped over her mouth, face red and eyes wide and mortified, and John is doubled over laughing so hard he’s crying.

 

x---x

 

When he walks into work two days later – first thing Monday morning – Lafayette snags him from the lobby before he can disappear down the stairs. “Uh, hi.”

Lafayette just grunts quietly in acknowledgement and leaves him to traipse along in his wake on the way to the chief of staff’s office. It’s not empty when they arrive, and he looks uncertainly at Washington’s very nonplussed press secretary and says cautiously, “Miss Hazard…”

Lafayette sits on the edge of his desk and crosses his arms over his chest. Any hope that this was something _besides_ a summons over something he did wrong vanishes with his coolly cocked brow and the slow shake of his head. “So. Alexandre. Ebony would like to yell at you.”

“Oh.” He looks quickly back and forth between the two of them. “Um.”

“I’ve asked her to hold off,” Lafayette continues wryly. “Because I know you, and I suspect you are yet ignorant as to the cause of her displeasure.”

“That is… most certainly correct,” he agrees, increasingly alarmed.

“I don’t suppose anyone’s taught you how to talk to reporters,” Hazard finally speaks up, glaring down at him.

He bristles. “What? I used to work in a room full of reporters.”

“Which has exactly zero relevance when the roles are reversed and you become the subject of a reporter’s interest.”

_Will Legget_ , he thinks resignedly, and he sighs. “What did he print?”

Lafayette’s brow furrows, and Hazard snaps, “Who?”

“Legget.” The confusion doesn’t fade from either of their faces, so he elaborates. “He found out recently that I used to work for the _Evening Post_ and was trying to… I don’t know really, but I thought I made it clear that -”

Hazard cuts him off with a gesture and asks drily, “And how long were you hanging around the press offices before Josephine Dennie started batting her eyelashes at you?”

The protest dies in his throat and his stomach sinks. “I didn’t… I wasn’t…”

“You were trying to blow her off,” Lafayette deduces shrewdly.

He nods dumbly, and Hazard throws her hands up in the air in exasperation. “Can someone teach this damn kid what _no comment_ means?” And then she stalks out of the office and slams the door.

Alexander swallows thickly. Collapses in a chair and wipes a hand over his eyes. “She publish this morning?” Lafayette hums an affirmative. “Adams?”

“Yep.”

“How bad is it?”

Lafayette clears his throat. Phone in hand, begins to quote, “ _Colonel Mercer’s White House liaison, Alexander Hamilton, is unconcerned with the vice president’s criticisms of the ongoing audit. Also serving as a policy analyst for the National Economic Council, the 22-year-old is ‘busy enough without allocating precious mental real estate towards whatever gripes John Adams is hashing out at the old boys’ club.’_ And then there’s a link to her December article just to add some flavor.”

He groans. Runs through a million inadequate excuses and irrelevant questions, runs his hand through his hair, and finally just offers weakly, “Can I issue a blanket denial on the grounds that I’m twenty-three now, not twenty-two?”

Lafayette plucks up a folder from his desk and smacks him in the arm with it.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry, Alexander & Edward is my obscurest of obscure historical OTPs and I couldn't resist.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Alexander attends a party that is way above his pay grade.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let's see. Brief explicit scene here. Should be pretty obvious when it's coming (heh) (sorry) if you want to skip it. 
> 
> Brief talk of parent death towards the end.

It takes about a week for someone to coax a response out of Adams at one of his increasingly frequent public appearances in the run-up to a primary free-for-all. To add insult to injury, it’s an _Evening Post_ reporter – not Legget, but a colleague out of the D.C. bureau – who does it, and Alexander is pretty sure that despite his sheepish explanation, Legget is peeved that he blew him off just to turn around and give a juicy quote to a rookie blogger half his age.

It’s still not exactly front page news. But it puts him on the radar of the press corps, which rarely bothers itself with even the actual councilmembers of the NEC, let alone the policy wonks working underneath them.

To Adams’s credit, he avoids calling him out directly, by name. Still, it’s not exactly any great amount of work to trace back the _unprofessional individual_ he attributes with “marring the relationship between the White House and one of the most important congressional committees, while simultaneously threatening to derail Colonel Mercer’s important and long overdue work.”

Hazard marches down to his little cubicle in the NEC suite and slaps the folded-open _Times_ down on his desk, a short enough story towards the end of the _A_ section. **VP fires back at junior White House staffer**.

He nudges the paper off the edge of his keyboard. “I’ve read it.”

Of course he’s read it; Adams might not have used his name directly, but the paper sure as hell did, and the online version linked back to a short and relatively unnoticed story they ran about the hearing the day after it happened.

Hazard huffs and snatches the paper back up off the desk. “And _what_ are you going to say the _moment_ a reporter tracks you down and asks -?”

“The same thing I told the _Times_ last night when they asked for a quote on _this_ story,” he snaps, cutting her off. She stares him down, unmoving and lips pursed, until he relents with a grumbled, “ _No comment_ , Christ, are you happy?”

She stares him down some more, looking severely unimpressed, and it takes a moment to register that this is _not_ Lafayette, this is one of Washington’s senior staffers and he is an absolute nobody working in a cramped cubicle in the basement, and heat rises in his cheeks. “Sorry, Miss Hazard,” he amends quietly. “Thank you.”

“Mmhm,” she drawls skeptically, and then stalks off again, the sound of her heels clicking on the floor briefly overtaken by the sound of his head thunking down on a small clear space on his desk. After her footsteps fade away, he takes a few deep breaths, and then startles back upright when something smacks down on the desk by his head.

It’s a thin black portfolio, some figures he’s been waiting on, and he twists around to meet Morris’s quirked-brow stare. “Do I want to know?”

“Nope.”

“Hm,” he grunts, and wanders away.

Lafayette sends him a text the next day to ask if he’ll pop by his office on his way out. Wondering what he’s done now, he slinks past the communications bullpen and down the short hallway to an open but empty office. He hovers awkwardly for a minute before deciding that leaving the office open was probably his invitation to go on in, and he takes up one of the spare chairs and fires off a text.

_To: G. Laf_

_I’m here. Bad time?_

And gets back after a couple of minutes skimming titles of books on the shelf and looking at pictures of Adrienne and the twins:

_From: G. Laf_

_5 mins. Trying to figure out if there’s an ongoing coup in a country I believe the NSA just made up an hour ago._

Five minutes becomes closer to fifteen, but eventually the quick pace of light footsteps herald the chief of staff’s appearance, which is more resigned than irritated, so Alexander supposes that if there _is_ a coup happening in some obscure country, it’s nothing too dire. “Ms. de Grasse keeping you on your toes?”

“We’re waiting on a translator, but nevertheless I do _not_ believe that the balance of global power rests on the outcome of present events.”

He grins. “What country?”

Lafayette grins back as he settles in behind his desk. “Above your clearance, mon ami.” Hands clasped together on top of the desk, he fixes Alexander with a narrow-eyed stare. “Now.”

He holds up his hands defensively. “Miss Hazard already yelled at me.”

“Did you do something that merited more yelling?”

“No,” he sulks, and then sulks harder when Lafayette bursts out laughing. “I can manage, from time to time, to demonstrate common sense and self-control.”

“Hm, well.” Lafayette visibly braces himself, which skyrockets Alexander’s wariness before he tells him, “I had Ebony… communicate with the vice president’s staff…”

“Oh, for God’s sake.”

“Just.” Lafayette pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs. “It is not because it is _you_ , d’accord? It is simply not a good look. For either a sitting vice president _or_ someone with presidential aspirations. To punch _down_ and to do so publicly. And I would rather not see _his_ ,” he points in the general direction of the Oval, “blood pressure go through the roof.”

Alexander presses his lips together in a thin line and exhales noisily through his nose. “Be a good boy, keep my head down, I got it.” He half-rises from his seat. “Is that all, then?”

“No,” Lafayette motions him back into his chair. “Tomorrow is Thomas’s last day at State. They’ll host a send-off press conference, and the Senate will vote on Randolph’s confirmation on Thursday, and the White House is hosting a small _hail and farewell_ type luncheon on Saturday.” He shakes his head, still not following. “Marty and Polly will be in attendance and requested that, space permitting, you and John might be invited along to rescue them from the inevitable drudgery.”

He thinks back to Peggy’s tale about Polly getting in trouble with her father back in January. And _then_ he gets the connection between the word of warning to Adams and Jefferson’s event, and he smiles shrewdly. “ _Ah_. So this is you telling me to be _civil_ , should I encounter Adams in the Rose Garden.”

“I would be endlessly grateful, yes. There shall be enough tension in the room on account of everyone apparently deciding eighteen _months_ before the next election that it will come down to a contest between Adams and Jefferson.”

Which he supposes is also his fault, but this doesn’t seem like an ideal time to confess that to Lafayette, as it goes.

“I’ll talk to John tonight,” he says by way of concession to the presented terms. “We’ve got an appointment that morning. Tux fitting.”

“O _ho_ ,” Lafayette quirks a brow. “And the occasion?”

“Aaron Burr is getting married, and to exactly no one’s surprise, it is an obnoxiously formal, black-tie event because he is an obnoxiously formal, black-tie sort of a person.”

“I see. Well social hour begins at eleven. Text me tonight if you think you’ll make it and I’ll forward your names to the coordinating staff.” He puts his hands flat on his desk and levers himself back out of his chair with a low groan. “And now, back to the absurdity of global affairs.”

Alexander lets him get to the door. Waits for him to throw it open and step back to allow his visitor to leave first, verifies there’s no one in the hallway as he stands, before telling Lafayette, “Give my regards to the possibly-deposed crown prince of Savedra.”

The baffled silence is confirmation enough of his quick social media assessment during Lafayette’s absence, and he smirks as he slips past the older man on his way out the door. “How in the fucking _fuck_ …?”

“I have my ways.” Lafayette looks distinctly unimpressed when Alexander shoots a glance over his shoulder, so he adds to clarify and reassure, “I’m part of the internet generation, Laf. I can spot a Twitter trend.”

He yanks the door closed and stalks after Alexander. “You don’t even _use_ social media!”

“I don’t _have_ social media,” Alexander corrects with a wink. “Doesn’t mean I don’t _use_ it.”

They part ways at the next stairwell, Lafayette just shaking his head and muttering incredulous obscenities under his breath.

 

x---x

 The rest of the week passes in typical fashion; overworked but nothing exciting, juggling some reports from Mercer with Morris’s usual demands. John gives a tentative _okay_ to Saturday’s event, assuming their appointment doesn’t run over and no one minds if they waltz in late if it does.

“And no more passive-aggressive conversations with Adams? That shit was _awkward_ at New Year’s.”

There’s nothing he can promise or do but shrug. “Dunno. Lafayette seemed to think he had it handled.”

“The hell _is it_ with you two, anyway?”

But it’s just… one of those things where John’s background, privileged and elevated in this world in its own way, maybe gave him a bit of a blind spot to just how obvious Adams’s distaste for dealing with the teenagers underfoot had been during their page days, and how particularly he seemed to dislike Alexander. Had viewed him as mouthy and impertinent, a perception that was undoubtedly solidified forever after once he was summoned to deal with the Capitol Police while sorting out the brief brawl with James Reynolds for which Washington subsequently expelled him.

Finding him with his own desk in the _White House_ a scant four and a half years later had, far as Alexander could tell, left a bitter taste in the man’s mouth and neither of them made any especial attempt to shield their disregard on the rare occasions their paths crossed.

But rather than attempt to concisely explain all of that to John and risk making him feel awkward over their very different perceptions of the vice president, he just shrugs and makes some teasing jab and pulls out his phone to text Lafayette about Saturday.

 

 

On Friday night, Alexander beats John home by a half-hour, and when John comes through the door, he’s alone. Sitting at the kitchen counter and getting some last minute work done ahead of the weekend, Alexander closes his laptop and eyes his boyfriend curiously. “Late night in the baby ward?”

He gets a wry grin in response. “Noo, he got done early. And left.” There’s a brief pause. “And won’t be home tonight.”

“ _Really_.”

“He and Hester seem to have moved on quickly from the mortified _years of miscommunication_ stage.”

And that makes him happy for Edward, but also a little melancholy in entirely unfair ways, the part of him that cherishes having his two best friends so close at hand, but also dreads the creeping deadline where John and Edward will start making decisions about the future, residency, decisions that will surely pull them in separate directions.

One night away isn’t exactly reason to panic, but he’s suddenly struck with alarm at the thought that Edward is under exactly zero obligation to continue living with them through the end of medical school, crazy as he’d be to leave the hilariously cheap rent arrangement they have with John’s parents. 

John throws his jacket over the back of the sofa and ducks around to press a quick kiss to his lips on his way around the counter to grab a drink from the fridge. “What’s going on?”

He lets a sly smile settle over his lips as he watches his boyfriend bend over to grab a pitcher off the middle shelf. “Nothing,” he says slowly, mind already running through the possibilities presented by a whole night with the place to themselves, “that cannot assuredly wait until Monday.”

Which earns him a bemused look over John’s shoulder as he reaches for a glass, pours himself a glass of orange juice. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Hm.” John comes to lean on the opposite side of the counter over the sink and stares at him with their noses six inches apart. “We have no food in the house.”

“I’m suddenly less hungry.” He leans in, slips his tongue into his boyfriend’s mouth, pulls back just as fast. “Help me build up an appetite?”

“We still won’t have food in the house.”

But John’s already circling the counter as he says it, a mischievous gleam in his eye. “It’s Friday night,” Alexander points out reasonably. “We’ll go out.”

“Hm,” he repeats. Arms wrap lightly around Alexander’s waist, tugging him to the edge of the counter stool as John steps up close, between his spread thighs. “We’ve got that appointment in the morning.”

“ _Ughh_.” He lets his head slump forward to rest on John’s chest, and then shivers when fingers comb carefully through his hair. “Do we _have_ to go to Burr’s wedding?”

“No.” Johns shrugs and Alexander looks up at him in hopeful surprise. “What shall I say when I make our excuses? _Sincerest apologies, but Alexander found the prospect of a good dicking down far more palatable than -”_ He breaks out with a startled squeal as Alexander attacks the button at the top of his pants and rucks the hem of his shirt out so he can slide his hands along warm skin. “Wait, wait,” he laughs, trying to pull back and finding himself trapped by the feet wrapped around his legs and locked behind his knees. “I’m gross, I smell like hospital, let me shower first.”

They barely make it up the stairs, laughing, Alexander clinging to John and trying to work the buttons of his shirt free as they move. By the time they reach the shower, articles of clothing are littered from the landing to the bed and John’s got a bruise sucked into his collarbone.

He gets on his knees and sucks John off under the hot spray, eyes pressed closed as rivulets of water stream down from his hair. He opens them long enough to grin wickedly up when John tries to warn that he’s getting close, to pull off if he doesn’t want to swallow, or stop if he doesn’t yet want him to come.

He _does_ swallow; he _does_ want to get him off, and five minutes later Alexander’s got him laid out face down on the bed, draped over his back while he rummages in a drawer for some key supplies. Once he finds them, he drops them on the bed by John’s hip and leans in to nibble on the shell of his ear and murmur, “I’m going to finger you until you’re hard again and then fuck you until you come again.”

John moans and Alexander gets to work.

 

x---x

Saturday dawns gray and dreary, a brisk snap in the air as they meander towards the metro station at eight-thirty, travel mugs in hand. There’s a brief and violent downpour while they’re at their appointment, including a clap of thunder so abrupt and so loud that Alexander starts and nearly stabs himself on a pin, but by the time they’re hurrying back home to change, it’s just thick humidity and cars splashing dirty puddles up onto the sidewalks.

The weather holds though and, though he’d meant it in jest, the event _is_ in the Rose Garden. The sun is even starting to peek through the clouds by the time they make it to the White House at quarter after eleven which, combined with the slowly dissipating humidity, makes it _just_ on the wrong side of too warm to be schmoozing outside in suits in the D.C. spring air.

Marty and Polly spy them almost immediately upon their entrance past a couple of taciturn agents and swoop down upon them arm-in-arm. They break apart and flank them, Marty looping her arm through John’s and Polly’s through Alexander’s, and then deftly maneuver them past the modest press gaggle and into the crowd of State Department staff and Congressional leadership. He sees incoming Secretary Randolph, posing with who Alexander assumes is his wife, kids, and grandkids for a photo with Washington, fresh off the heels of his confirmation Thursday that sailed through the Senate.

He spies Madison before he spies Jefferson, which is odd considering their respective statures and Jefferson’s decidedly more flamboyant personality. But Jefferson’s sitting at one of the tables dotted around the lawn with his head bowed low, talking with Lafayette while Madison sits opposite, uninterested in their conversation, eyes roaming aimlessly about the gathering. He spares a quirked brow and a nod of acknowledgement when he catches Alexander’s eye, and then resumes his bored perusal.

“So how’s France?” John asks Marty as they settle in at the furthest table from the center of the gathering and completely ignore the name placards already set at each chair.

“Good,” she sighs, tone wistful. “I’m moving back this summer.”

John barks out a laugh and says aloud the very thing Alexander was thinking. “Oh, so your dad _is_ running.”

Marty levels a cool stare at him and then flags down a passing waiter with a tray full of lemonade and iced tea. Polly waits until her sister’s head is turned and then nods slowly, wide-eyed, in response.

He’s never really doubted the prediction, but Alexander feels somewhat vindicated on Publius’s behalf to finally have it confirmed.

They’re obliged to move as it closes in on midday, and the milling crowd begins sorting out the seating assignments. Jefferson intercepts his daughters and the three of them pause at the request of the White House photographer, Marty smiling charmingly and Polly gritting her teeth in an attempt at playing the public part that’s never much interested her and, far as Alexander understands, she may resent altogether.

But then they’re pulling John and Alexander right back along to fill in at one of the tables by the front of the lawn. Jefferson reaches over and plucks the champagne flute from the setting in front of Polly’s chair as he lowers himself into his seat. She rolls her eyes and changes course to switch places with John, putting him in between Marty and Alexander and Polly on Alexander’s other side.

John catches Jefferson’s eye and takes his champagne with him. “How about you, Hamilton? You old enough for that yet?”

He takes a long, slow sip, never mind that he’ll undoubtedly need it for toasts later on, and says lightly, “We’ve known one another seven years, Mister Secretary, did you think I was thirteen when we met?”

“Touché,” Jefferson tips his water glass towards Alexander while Madison covers a dry, awkward cough at his other side.

The four empty chairs at their table get filled quickly enough; Alexander wishes he’d stopped a moment to check the seating assignments as Lafayette fills in on Polly’s other side with Adrienne, with Abigail Adams and the vice president rounding out the circle.

He fixes Lafayette with a pointed look while the Adams are busy exchanging pleasantries with Jefferson, Marty, and John, and gets a resigned shrug in return. “Edmund has a big family,” he nods over at the table where the president, first lady, Humphreys and Tilghman are chatting amicably with the incoming secretary and his cohort of relatives. “Adjustments were necessary.”

Polly leans in when Lafayette turns back to Adrienne and Abigail, beaming smile upon his face. “What’s your beef?”

“The vice president and I may or may not be engaged in a low-key media feud,” he mutters under his breath. “Laf and Addy are playing buffer because he doesn’t trust me.”

This apparently delights Polly, who he supposes chafes under the constant strain of being _diplomatic_ in the shadow of her diplomat father. She laughs, but then just turns and catches Adrienne’s eye and asks, “No girls today?”

“Do _you_ want to chase them around the whole garden the entire time?” she asks blandly, and then catches a dry look from Jefferson lobbed at his youngest daughter and amends, “Don’t answer that.”

 

Lunch is a pleasant affair, even with Adams’s presence. John discreetly interrogates the Jefferson sisters in turn, a pink-cheeked Polly about her maybe-possibly-sort-of thing with Peggy Schuyler and Marty about her secretive beau across the pond. The older diners keep the conversation tactfully away from politics and future ambitions, and Madison even manages to engage Alexander in a lengthy conversation about the NEC’s work regarding an upcoming trade summit without diverting attention to the murkier waters of his work for Mercer or his committee hearing display.

There are speeches – Washington first, thanking Jefferson for his three years of service in the administration, and then Jefferson’s farewell, an abbreviated address compared to the one he gave at State a few days prior. At the end, he passes the proverbial baton to the older man sitting at Washington’s side, and then Randolph offers a short spiel thanking the other two men and a vague vision for the future at the department.

Polly manages to sneak a sip of Alexander’s champagne anyway when they drink to Jefferson’s happy retirement and Randolph’s successful tenure ahead.

Order breaks down quickly after dessert and coffee are served. People trade tables to carry on earlier conversations, busy government officials dash out to take phone calls. The press present, a smaller contingent than the full corps – though Alexander isn’t sure if that’s by design or simply the priorities of media interest on a weekend – are given more freedom to roam.

John gets dragged off at some point by an old colleague of his father’s, so it’s just Alexander’s luck when Will Legget drops into his abandoned seat. “Will you be offended if I say this event seems a bit above your paygrade?”

“It is _hilariously_ above my paygrade,” Alexander concedes.

“He’s not here in a professional capacity,” Marty cuts in from Legget’s other side, “he’s here at the invitation of my family.” She sticks out her hand, no-nonsense. “Martha Jefferson.”

“Will Legget. _Evening Post_.”

And just like that, the reporter loses interest in light of a more intriguing subject of his professional attentions. Alexander sits back and marvels at her easy demeanor, a finely-honed skill at talking amiably while saying nothing at all that speaks to her years in the spotlight of her father’s career.

Polly nudges him and jerks her head backwards. “Wanna get out of here?”

He snorts softly at her phrasing, but wastes no time joining her in ditching her older sister. Considers for a moment, before deciding to finally take the leap and try to satisfy a bit of nosey curiosity from January, after John’s outing with the Schuyler sisters and the reportedly ignominious end to Polly’s night. “So you and Marty seem to have… _very_ different relationships with the whole _politician’s child_ situation.”

Polly flashes a dangerous smile at him as they meander aimlessly along the outer edge of the gardens, yet too early in the year for the full effect of the carefully landscaped space. “To be fair, we have very different relationships with said _politician_ ,” she points out.

Alexander cringes; _that_ he supposes ought have been obvious. “Sorry. I guess that was tactless.”

But she waves him off and shrugs. And tells him, incredibly bluntly, “Dad didn’t know what to do with me when mom died.”

“Oh. God.”

“To be entirely fair, he didn’t know what to do with _himself_ , either. And Marty was old enough to sort of… help him with that. And I was too young to understand why mom wasn’t coming home.” In a rare bout of self-consciousness, she scuffs at the grass with the pointed toe of her shoe and admits, “I barely remember her.”

“I’m really sorry.”

She shrugs again, cheeks flushed. “Point being – Marty’s earliest memories are traveling the world with our parents. Mine are the cohort of nannies while dad was in the Senate and _I_ was too young to ship off to boarding school.”

“So if you hate all of this, why are you here?” Polly stops and turns and blinks at him. “Surely school can provide _some_ excuse to beg off all the pomp and circumstance.”

“I dunno.” She turns and peers back across the thinning crowd on the lawn and finds where her father, towering above the rest of the crowd, is chatting with Abigail Adams and Martha Washington, while John and Marty stand a few feet away, red in the face and laughing about something with Tilghman and Lafayette. “Still family, y’know?”

_No_ , he supposes, he doesn’t really know, not really. Not anymore.

And for the first time in weeks, as he stares around the space inhabited by the rich and powerful, the Beltway elite – _above his paygrade_ , indeed – he thinks about his brother. About the vastly disparate courses their lives have taken, impossible to predict in the lost decade that hovers between them.

And for the first time in more than five years, he thinks about maybe actually returning to Saint Croix one day with Edward for a visit.

They wind their way back around the perimeter towards the gathering. “And besides,” Polly murmurs wryly as Abigail nods their way, as Jefferson turns and catches sight of them and smiles at his younger daughter – sincere but strained, like he’s expecting her to rebuff the effort to draw her back into the group – “He does try. In his way.”

Just like that, she slips off and slots herself into a space between her sister and her father and beams for the hovering photographer with an _AP_ logo on the press credentials hanging around his neck.

“Ah. Mister Hamilton.”

His spine stiffens and he sucks in a calming breath through his nose, running Lafayette’s pleas through his head like a mantra before turning and offering his blandest smile along with his hand. “Mister Vice President.”

Adams actually shakes it, which is something. And then he turns and leans in close to Alexander’s side as they survey the schmoozing going on around them, no one paying them any mind for a brief moment, and murmurs, “Do me a favor, Mister Hamilton – do not get used to this.”

He crosses his arms over his chest and quirks a brow, though Adams cannot see it. “Sir?”

“You’ve had an impressive run, milking your status as Washington’s favorite charity case.” _That_ makes him turn and stare, heat rising in his cheeks, protest forming on his lips. “Kindly see that you do not overstay your welcome in this house. Your homeless, orphan sob story is not enough to make me look past your attitude and poor impulse control.”

“John,” Jefferson calls, and Alexander whips back around to see his eyes glinting curiously between him and Adams as he strolls forward. “Come, come. The press has its narrative and we must oblige with appropriate photo ops. _Friends across the aisle, rivals on the campaign trail_.”

“Heavens, Thomas,” Adams comments idly, “Is this you finally conceding your intentions to run?”

“Well,” Jefferson winks at Alexander, “let us not get ahead of ourselves.”

“Incorrigible. Ah,” Adams takes Alexander by the arm as he makes to get out of the photographer’s way. “Let us make nice for the cameras at last, Mister Hamilton, everyone loves a good reconciliation story.”

He smiles tightly and obliges, and murmurs out of the corner of his mouth, “Mister Vice President?” Adams hums an acknowledgement. “ _Kindly_ do not get too confident in your presumptions of what the next eighteen months shall yield. You’re awfully comfortable inhabiting such lofty hypotheticals.”

With that, he pulls away from the arm wrapped loosely around his shoulders and stalks off.

He doesn’t make it far. A reporter he doesn’t recognize intercepts him on his way to reconnect with John and the Jefferson sisters, but based upon the _Times_ logo on the pass slung about his neck, he assumes it to be the same one who ran the story about his burgeoning feud with Adams. “Alexander Hamilton?”

“Yeah,” he says, snappier than he really intended, and the speed with which Hazard descends upon them speaks to just how nervously she must have been watching his whole interaction with Adams.

He grins and nods over at the small gaggle forming around Adams and Jefferson. “Are you and the vice president patching things up between yourselves?”

He’s not trolling for a quote, Alexander can tell. Just a teasing jab, a follow up on his story from earlier in the week. Nevertheless, he meets Hazard’s intent gaze over the reporter’s shoulder, cocks a half-smile, and follows her instructions to the letter.

“No comment.”

And he walks away.

 

 

He gets a text from Lafayette later that afternoon that just says: _You are liable to give Ebony a stroke_.

They’re home by then. Returned to find Edward and Hester resurfaced, arguing over Netflix and making a mess of some baking project in the kitchen, and fielded queries about their formal weekend attire – followed by Hester’s inevitable, “Wait, you work at the _White House_?”

So he texts quietly back, brooding through the effort to sit and enjoy the movie they collectively settled upon: _I did precisely what she told me to do, the VP is a dick, fight me._

_From: G. Laf_

_Addy just sprayed tea out of her nose, just so you know_.

It’s a very similar sort of a weekend afternoon, two weeks later, that the other shoe drops. The four of them are returning from a lunch outing in Dupont Circle, a decision they came close to regretting with the influx of tourist traffic that always descends on the city during cherry blossom season. Hester takes a box of leftovers to the fridge and jockeys for space with John, digging out some cold drinks after an overambitious walk back in an attempt to avoid the metro. Edward collapses straight onto the sofa, and Alexander does his obligatory work-addicted email check at the laptop sitting on the kitchen counter.

It takes him several seconds to parse exactly what is wrong with the unread message waiting for him on his government account; for his brain to catch up with the instantaneous plummeting of his stomach, the cold chill that freezes him in place, hovering over the back of one of the stools.

He doesn’t even have to _open_ the email for the full weight of its implications to come crashing down on him, a sense of dread for the inevitable – perhaps, he can’t help but think, inevitable long before this moment. Perhaps going all the way back to a two and a half year old conversation with Washington about moving to D.C. and coming to work for Morris. Perhaps going back further than that, to his pleasant surprise and halting agreement to join John in Lafayette and Adrienne’s wedding party. Or further still, to his agonized decision to accept the boost from Washington and Jefferson and submit their recommendation letter with his Columbia application and all but guarantee his ability to go.

Or perhaps just four and a half months ago. A swell of nearly inexplicable panic, and it’s strange, that realization, because it is a frozen numbness that overtakes him now at the realization of those fears.

He doesn’t need to open the email; the subject of it says everything he needs to know.

**JDennie@buzzfeedpoli.com**

_senate page program_

A violent buzzing cuts through the clinking of bottles, low voices from the television behind him, John’s quiet murmur and Hester laughing on her way to grab the offending device. “Whose phone?”

“Alex’s,” John spares a glance.

“What kind of a name is _G Laf_?” Hester mumbles around a leftover fry hanging out of her mouth.

He doesn’t move. It rings out, and John takes it from her and circles around to come lean against the counter by his side. “Hey. Work?”

Alexander wipes a hand over his mouth and nods at the screen. John follows his gaze, and apparently processes a lot faster than Alexander had based upon the quick intake of breath and the way his eyes snap back to Alexander’s face. “What -?” The phone in John’s hand starts buzzing again. He spares a glance for it, double-takes, and then shoves it at Alexander. “You should take it.”

“Laf can wait.” At least until he can muster up the courage to open the thing and get the full lay of the land, the extent of the damage.

“It’s not Laf, you should take it.”

Biting back the automatic retort, he snatches up the cell and goes to decline the call.

He stops himself at the last instant.

_Incoming call: George W._

“ _Fuck_ ,” he breathes, slamming his computer closed, tucking it under one arm, and dashing for the stairs, phone ringing insistently in his hand.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "They were calling you a dick back in '76 and you haven't done anything new since...!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's late in the game for an alternating POV situation but whatever, I do what I want.

He remembers to send the warning to Hazard in the nick of time; he’s finally got Anastasie convinced to lie down and Adrienne is just finishing a quiet book with Virginie on the other side of the room when a premonition of the jarringly loud doorbell rousing both from their absurdly protracted efforts to get them down for a nap has him scrambling for his phone and discreetly sending a text with the thing down by his knees so the drowsy baby can’t see it.

It’s a finely-honed skill.

_To: Ebony H._

_The girls are napping, don’t ring the bell or Addy will dump both our bodies in the Potomac._

They’re just slipping out of the room, both holding their breath against the daily roulette of the relative success or failure of naptime, pulling the door closed as quietly as possible, when her message comes through that she’s here and waiting on the front porch.

Much as working weekends is an unfortunate fact of life when you’re working for the president, this is a new one, and he’s trying to remember if he’s ever even seen the press secretary in casual clothing before as he ushers her inside the house. “Drink?” he offers, nodding back towards the kitchen and the clanging sounds of Adrienne cleaning up from lunch.

“No, thanks,” she declines, tone flat enough to suggest that this visit is more displeasure than emergency.

So they move to the living room instead and take up seats opposite a coffee table and he waves her on. “Well, out with it, then.”

“Hm?”

“Whatever you’ve come here to yell at me about, out with it.”

That only serves to draw her brows in tighter and she leans in, mirrors his posture with her elbows propped on her thighs, gaze cast down. “I don’t know if I need to yell at you, yet. I got a call from Shep Kollock just before I called you.”

The _Times_ reporter is certainly one of the more tenacious members of the White House corps, and he immediately starts thinking back and trying to decide what he might have gotten his hands on to merit such a response from their unflappable press secretary. “Okay…”

“Tell me – that kid who works for Morris. The one with the mouth.” He snorts softly at that. “I go into work on Monday and pull up his personnel file, am I going to find his birthday is late December, early January?”

A short, incredulous laugh escapes him before he can rein it in. “What?” he sits back, bemused. “I have no idea when Alexander’s birthday is, why?”

“Because -”

“It’s in January,” Adrienne cuts in from the doorway, glass of sparkling water in her hand. She passes it over and Hazard takes it with a gracious smile that suggests no hint of her prior taut refusal. “How are you, Ebony?”

“I’m alright, Addy, thanks.” Her eyes flicker warily between Lafayette and Adrienne just once as Adrienne comes to perch on the arm of his chair.

Once is enough. “What happened?”

She exhales noisily through her nose and pulls something up on her phone. “The vice president -”

“Oh, for _god’s sake_ …”

“The vice president,” she starts again, stern look holding him at bay, “was at a fundraiser this morning. Some kind of prayer breakfast, God and pancakes kind of thing, whatever.” He hums and nods, not even trying to piece these disparate threads together yet. “His cousin was there. The wholly more charismatic, fundraising arm of the Adams family.”

“Samuel.”

“Mm-hm. And they were seated next to one another. And talking. And someone neglected to turn off the tabletop mics.”

“Oh, Jesus Christ.”

She shrugs and plays the clip that she’s pulled up on her phone. It’s horrid sound quality, and the picture keeps sliding in and out of focus. A camera left on after the remarks maybe, or a quick test during downtime. For several seconds, it’s just the garbled sound of dozens of voices all chattering at once, before the odd distant, tinny quality of a voice picked up on a mic it’s not actively speaking into: “ _You still letting a kid forty years your junior provoke you into press flaps?”_

And undoubtedly Adams’s voice in response: “ _Alexander Hamilton was a loud-mouthed, obnoxious bother the day he was admitted to the Senate Page Program, and he’s continued to be an overly-indulged and arrogant nuisance in this town since the day we_ expelled _him from the Senate Page Program_.”

Hazard switches it off and drops her phone back on the coffee table with a clatter. “That _loud-mouthed bother_ got into a smart-ass spat with a congressman for all of C-SPAN to see, and Josephine Dennie in all of her clickbait glory signal-boosted the hell out of that spat, in which Hamilton makes a smart-ass comment about being twenty-two years-old.” Lafayette wipes his hands over his face. “And Shep Kollock can do math, and _I_ can do math, and I swear to God, Gil, I want you to look me in the eye and tell me that the president didn’t do _exactly_ what I’m pretty sure you’re about to tell me he did.”

Adrienne moves slowly down off her perch and lowers herself into another chair. Wide-eyed and confused. “I don’t understand. What does his birthday have to do with anything?”

“He had to be sixteen or seventeen,” Lafayette answers quietly. “To be a page, and that next spring was the last term before the three-year hiatus. He was twenty-two during the hearing, which means he was fifteen in December of 2017. He had to have had a birthday before the start of the term in January.”

She shrugs. “Okay. So?”

He exchanges a look with Hazard, and knows she can read exactly what she _doesn’t_ want to see in his eyes. “There will be questions.”

“Don’t answer them.”

“No _shit_ ,” she snaps. “That’s not going to stop them asking more. It’s not going to stop them from pestering that kid who _you_ and the president have put in this position and _what_ in the _hell_ were you _thinking_?” He says nothing; carefully avoids looking at Adrienne’s hot stare. “Who sponsored him?”

“George.”

“Jesus Christ, Gil.”

“That’s when Patsy died,” he reminds her softly. “George sponsored him but Thomas’s office took charge. _Jefferson_ ,” he clarifies hastily at her bug-eyed stare. “Jesus.”

Hazard lets out a heavy exhale. Shakes her head, pinches the bridge of her nose and repeats, “What in the hell were you thinking?” He climbs to his feet and runs a hand down his face, pacing back and forth in the doorway while studiously avoiding looking at his wife’s face. “Where the hell _were you_ , Gil? I know there’s a certain political cynicism that eludes the president even still, so where were _you_ to tell him, unequivocally, that he could not bring the kid at the center of a damn sex scandal investigation of which _he was in charge_ to come and work in his White House?”

_You can’t_ do _this, George_.

“That _kid_ ,” he pauses long enough to fix her with a level stare, “had an impossibly impressive resume by the time he was twenty, and a world class mind that has nothing whatsoever to do with Thomas Conway.”

“Which will be a great consolation to young Mister Hamilton,” she bites, “when he’s being hounded in and out of work by reporters asking if he had sex with a pederast senator when he was barely sixteen, for Christ’s sake.”

 

Some of the ire has bled out of Hazard’s eyes by the time he sees her out the door ten minutes later, but it’s replaced by a weary exhaustion he knows all too well, an exhaustion he sees more and more on the faces of the staff who have carried them well into a second term.

Exhaustion and resignation – there’s not a lot to be done, not until he talks to Washington, to Alexander. Not until they find out if anyone else caught the audio, and he hardly dares dream they’ll be so lucky that the only reporter to do so was one with enough professional ethics and common sense to avoid touching that live wire altogether.

He doesn’t even _know_ where the standards of journalistic ethics come down on such a volatile topic. But it hardly matters, either – as soon as a reporter is _willing_ to ask if there’s a connection between Alexander’s expulsion from the program and the ignominious way in which the program ended soon thereafter, it will be a story regardless of Hazard’s refusal to engage the topic.

But he does make a mental note to give their next big advance scoop to Shep Kollock.

When he gets back to the living room, Adrienne is sitting with her elbows propped on her knees, face in her hands, and he winces internally and braces against the unknown when he tells her, “I have to go. He’s in the Residence this weekend.”

He can hear a soft huff and she shakes her head before pulling her hands away and murmuring, “Am I an _idiot_?”

“Addy…”

“No, I’m asking, seriously. Am I? Is this… should I have _known_ this, somehow?”

“Of course not. Not if he didn’t tell you.”

“George expelled him. He _expelled him_ , Gil.”

He sighs; shrugs helplessly, and lowers himself slowly back into his seat. “He didn’t know. When he made that call, he didn’t know. Alexander… he dumped the whole thing with James Madison and Thomas the next morning and wouldn’t even stick around long enough to talk to George again. He went home.”

“And our wedding?” He blinks at her, confused at the non sequitur. “You were hesitant – when I said I wanted John and Alexander there.”

“I didn’t think - ”

“Be honest with me now – would Alexander even be here if he hadn’t crossed paths with George again that day?”

_That_ lances a jolt of guilt and anger and frustration through him. Some for the president, some small bit, quite uncharitably, for Alexander, and most of it reserved for himself, because Hazard’s right –

He knew better. Knew better when Washington suggested passing his name on to Morris, knew better when Adrienne suggested including him and John in the wedding but couldn’t justify telling her the precise reason _why_ the idea made him wary…

Knew better when he reprimanded then-Senator Washington for getting attached and invested in Alexander Hamilton’s life out of a misplaced sense of guilt and responsibility.

“I have to go,” he repeats, and does not answer her question.

 

x---x

“You can’t call Adams,” Lafayette finds himself tiredly pointing out to the president twenty minutes later.

“But -”

“You _cannot_ call him,” he repeats sharply. “You cannot yell at him over the phone, you cannot summon him to the Oval tomorrow like a petulant child and yell at him there. You cannot do _anything at all_ that might suggest that Alexander Hamilton is anything more to you than any of the other four _hundred_ people who work in the White House.”

Washington smacks his hand down on the marble countertop in the opulent Residence kitchen. “John was warned about this,” he counters, eyes blazing.

“I’m not thinking about Adams’s rightly-deserved comeuppance, I’m thinking about Alexander and you should be, too.” Washington opens his mouth, indignant, but Lafayette cuts him off. “The press knows damn well that the administration would never address questions about either the Conway investigation _or_ a disciplinary incident from a staffer’s _high school_ career, for Christ’s sake. _You_ wading into it makes it a story that otherwise has a chance of going away on its own with enough stonewalling.”

A heavy silence weighs between them. He braces himself against further argument, and the president looks ready to oblige. But then he visibly deflates and wipes a hand distractedly over his bald head, and then turns and grabs a glass from a cabinet and fills it as aggressively as Lafayette has ever seen someone run a tap. “You think he did it on purpose.”

“You think he _didn’t_?” No answer, save the tightening of Washington’s shoulders, hunched over the sink as he is. “He and Alexander have made no secret of their contempt for one another.”

“It’s just _petty_ , though, and he’ll earn exactly the flak from the press you had Ebony warn him off of weeks ago!”

“And he’ll be very contritely sorry for the _careless mistake_ and emphasize his _personal conversation_ with a family member and sit back and watch Alexander squirm while the press make their inevitable speculations.”

“Gil,” Washington murmurs, “John _never knew_. He never knew which student was… he was annoyed, that Thomas and I cut him out of the loop on the finer points of the investigation!”

He eyes the older man dubiously. “I am above averagely certain that someone has clued him in during the seven years since, and I would _bet_ only in the few months since Alexander made a minor spectacle of himself in front of the House committee.”

“But _who_?” He shrugs; it hardly matters now. “Anyone who he’d trust in such a claim would never divulge that information, and anyone who might yet harbor some resentment for Alexander over those events wouldn’t be someone John is inclined to take at their word.”

“I don’t know what to tell you, sir. He didn’t invoke _that_ term, and all of its baggage, just to embarrass someone over throwing a punch as a teenager.”

Washington smacks his glass down on the counter and points out coolly, “ _You_ told me you had John handled.”

“And I also told you that you couldn’t latch on to Alexander Hamilton and try to assuage the myriad injustices in his life, and we know how well _that_ went!” Washington’s mouth presses into a thin line, but there’s a faint flicker of something in his eyes, guilt or acknowledgement at the least. “I should have put my foot down when you wanted Morris to take him on.”

“He’s good at his job,” Washington protests quietly.

“And I count him a friend,” he fires back. “He’s babysat my damn kids. Since when does any of that matter in this game?”

“I can’t tell if you’re worried about the _appearance_ of impropriety, or if you think that -”

“ _Fuck_ , George,” he throws up his hands in frustration while the president starts in surprise at the force of his outburst. “How do you not - ? We _can’t talk about it_. Not to answer questions or confirm or deny rumors or to explain away the very things that, yes, could _appear improper_. If a reporter asks you at your next press conference if you expelled Alexander Hamilton _because_ he was in an inappropriate relationship with another senator, you don’t get to say _of course not_ , you have to say that those events aren’t on the table for discussion. If somebody asks if you hired him here four years later because you felt like you owed him something, you can give nothing more than a _no comment_. You can’t explain anything away without verifying that there’s something to explain in the first place.”

“So what do we do?”

“We hope to hell that Kollock had the only camera on in the room and that anyone else who heard it didn’t think anything of it, didn’t recognize the name.”

His phone buzzes in his pocket. He fishes it out, and Washington asks, “What do you suppose the chances of _that_ are?”

Lafayette thumbs open the text from Hazard, wholly unsurprised by what it says. “None,” he says bitterly, slapping his phone down on the counter and rubbing at his temples in weary frustration. “It’s already on Twitter.”

The video loads and it’s _worse_ , somehow, despite being off a shaky cell, because it’s directed straight at John and Samuel Adams at the head table and there’s no mistaking who’s speaking when the mic picks them up.

“Have you spoken with Alexander?”

Alexander’s total shunning of social media gives him some hope that he might make it back to Adams Morgan before he sees it or anyone contacts him about it – and then he recalls his teasing _I don’t have social media – doesn’t mean I don’t_ use _it_ and he snatches his phone back up off the counter and scrolls through the contacts.

It rings out. It _is_ a Sunday, early enough he might be at lunch. Might be at a movie, might have left his phone on a charger elsewhere in the house, might be engaged in a hundred activities that _don’t_ involve taking an unexpected call from his boss on a weekend.

Somehow, he doubts it.

He holds out his hand towards Washington and snaps, “Phone.”

“What do you -?”

“Give me,” he gestures impatiently, and then scrolls through to find Alexander’s number in the proffered device.

It connects midway through the fourth ring.

 

x---x

 

John hovers just inside the door as he murmurs a last acknowledgement and ends the phone call. Arms crossed, chin to his chest, staring broodingly at the floor as he waits, but Alexander doesn’t fill him in right away.

Instead, he opens the computer again right there where he sits cross-legged in the middle of the bed and, better knowing what to expect, opens the email from Dennie with a noisy sigh. It’s nothing remarkable – reminiscent of her quest for a comment after his C-SPAN debut – with a link to the video and the accompanying note on Twitter.

_Aaw shit, guys, VP & Hamilton have Dramatic Backstory™ _

The upload is barely twenty minutes old and already has a couple hundred likes and a few dozen retweets. The counter updates and the numbers jump, and he clicks out of the tab before it risks shooting his anxiety into overdrive.

And he thinks about Lafayette’s words of advice, and caution, and reassurance. They can’t stop the questions, but the administration wouldn’t engage them anyway; stonewalling the press on this won’t be read as confirmation of _anything_ , and ideally the most they’d be able to do is link his time as a page to _that_ term and…

And it’s a precarious set of dominoes even to begin with.

The least he can do is control how the first one falls.

So he picks up his phone and dials the number in Dennie’s email signature. She picks up almost instantly.

“ _Hello_?”

“Hi, Josie, it’s Alexander Hamilton. I got your email.”

“ _Oh_ ,” she says, surprised, and then he hears a distant clatter and a soft swear, followed by some rustling like she’s changing the phone between hands perhaps. “ _Sorry, I’m fighting with my kitchen and my kitchen is winning_.”

“Bad time?” he asks wryly.

But she’s quick to reassure him otherwise, probably afraid she’ll lose this rare opportunity. He listens to her get whatever she’s doing under control for a minute, and then there’s another pause while she digs up her own computer and, a little short on breath, she says, “ _Okay, sorry. You got my email_.”

And putting as much uncaring good humor in his voice, he tells her: “I did – and first may I just say, off the record, that the vice president is a _dick_?”

“ _My lips are sealed_ ,” she laughs. “ _So this whole snarking back-and-forth between you two…”_

“Yeah, no, he was a dick back then, too.”

There’s a halting pause, her voice a little tentative – hoping for a quote she can actually use. “ _Can I –_ on _the record? Is he right, then? That you got booted out of the program?”_

“Yup.”

“ _Why?_ ”

“It probably won’t come as much of a shock to learn that I had no chill back then, either. Got in an argument with an intern and ended it by punching him in the nose.”

“ _I suppose that’ll do it_.” He chuckles, and bites back a sigh while he waits for the inevitable follow-up. “ _You, ah – you were class of ‘twenty-one at Columbia_.”

How she’s sussed that one out, he isn’t sure, but he supposes it’s probably lurking somewhere about the internet. A departmental newsletter, a dean’s list, something. “Yeah.”

“ _So this was…late ‘fifteen, early ‘sixteen?”_

Part of him can’t help but wonder if she’s not trying to catch him in a lie – she, of all people, knows damn well how old he is now, but it’s also entirely possible that she isn’t yet finely acquainted with the requirements of the Page Program, that she doesn’t realize that even if he’d been a fourteen-year-old high school junior, he wouldn’t have been eligible for it at all.

Regardless, she doesn’t strike him the type, and he suspects it’s a more roundabout way of sating her curiosity, curiosity that probably goes all the way back to the hearing. “No,” he answers after a beat. “No, I overworked myself through college and did six semesters in two years. This was spring of ‘eighteen.”

“ _Oh_.” He can hear the surprise in her voice at the ready admission, and she trips over the follow-up. “ _Oh. That was… they suspended the… you were there the last term before they suspended the program.”_

“Well,” he swallows and meets John’s wide-eyed stare, frozen in the doorway. “I was there for most of it, anyway.”

“ _Right_ ,” she says back quickly. “ _Right_. _Um… thanks. And you said I can…_ ”

He laughs again, a bit more sincerely this time. Admires her determination, even as she fumbles her way through this new world and all of its rules. “Just don’t print that I called Adams a dick, ‘kay?”

“ _Got it_. _Thanks, Alexander_.”

John walks up and lowers himself slowly on the bed when he ends the call and gently closes his laptop again. Meets his eyes, worried and confused, and shakes his head and says, “You get what you’ve just done, right?” He shrugs and tosses himself backwards onto the pillows. “Any outlet that wants to pick up the story can now report, without question, that you were there when -”

“Just like they used to report all hush-hush that you and Eliza and Aaron were pages?” he bites.

“That’s different,” he says slowly. “We were already in the public eye.”

He fights to find the words, to explain. “If I’d made them work for that much, it’d just look like I had even _more_ to hide.”

“You _do_ have more to hide.”

“…Oh.”

“Goddammit, Alex, that’s not what I -”

“Maybe it’d be easier if I just called her back and said, _Yes, I slept with Thomas Conway, so what?_ ”

“Then _do it_ ,” John retorts. “If you’re ready for what comes _next_.”

The contrary side of him that’s been feeling more than a little nihilistic since seeing that damn email waiting for him is tempted; the rational part knows that John is right, and Lafayette and the president, and at the very least he needs to wait until he can sit down with Hazard who will be pissed enough as is about the bone he just threw Dennie.

So he sighs and tilts his head up to see John gnawing his lip with worry. “Can I just… have a minute?” He hesitates. “I will not make any more ill-advised phone calls, I just…”

“Okay.”

He makes an abortive motion, like he wants to lean in for a kiss and then thinks better of it, before slipping out the door and pulling it mostly closed behind him. Alexander can hear his footsteps echoing down the stairs, and Edward’s concerned queries, until eventually he tunes them out and closes his eyes and wonders –

What comes next, indeed?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Having sorted out my computer woes finally, I'm pleased to say that the final chapter is well underway at last. So barring any unforeseen nonsense, the whole thing should be up in the next 2 weeks. 
> 
> Also, I added a silly little childhood prequel one-shot as a part 6 to this series, if anyone wants to check that out. :)


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An old mystery or two unraveled, and Alexander being Alexander. 
> 
> Alternatively: _Well that escalated quickly._

Alexander arrives at work stupid early on Monday morning and dodges any questions, from either press _or_ senior staff. Ignores an email from Will Legget, feeling a little bad about the way he’s constantly being overlooked in favor of a far more inexperienced reporter who just happened to latch on to a story before she could ever have known what that story would truly be.

He’d be lying if he said that giving the information to _Buzzfeed_ over, say, the _Evening Post_ doesn’t leave him _some_ small hope that it might be overlooked altogether. But by mid-morning, he’s got an email from the Comms shop upstairs that he doesn’t even get to, amidst more pressing work, before Hazard is hovering over his shoulder, tapping the toe of her shoe impatiently against the floor, waiting for him to get up and join her in a more private location for an interrogation.

When they get to the empty meeting room though, she looks less pissed than recent times their paths have crossed. Closer to exasperated, maybe. He’d count that a win, except now he knows that she _knows_ and he just feels weird. Exposed. “Ma’am?” he prompts, terse, as she pulls the door closed behind them.

“Alright, Hamilton, here’s the deal.” She crosses her arms over her chest as she studies him through narrowed eyes. “I’m not going to yell at you. And I’ll even keep Gil off your back when Josie Dennie’s story makes its way through the grapevine.”

“…Thanks?” A brow creeps slowly up her forehead. “Um… why?”

“Because the same thought crossed my mind, and I wasn’t sure I even wanted to ask you if you thought you could pull it off.” He blinks. “Like I told Gil – reporters can do math. You didn’t give her anything any one of them couldn’t have figured out for themselves, you just deprived them the intrigue of connecting the dots on their own.”

“Okay.”

“But here’s the deal.” She jabs a finger at him, and some of the sternness returns. “You have got to _work with me_ , Hamilton. Okay? Let me be your first line of defense from now on. The advantage of working here is that you _don’t_ have to muddle through the press on your own, that’s what my team is for.”

“Oh. _God_ , does the whole Communications department know about my teenage sexual exploits, or…?”

“Not yet,” she fires back, “Is that adequate incentive to not let any reporters provoke you into saying something rash?”

A wry smile twists up one side of his mouth despite himself. “I’ll be good,” he promises, and neither of them mention the numerous loose ends by which, really, if someone were feeling particularly vindictive – Lee, Andre, Arnold – they could torpedo their cautious efforts to ease past the next couple weeks without more than a passing interest in the timing of his past foray into the realm of federal politics.

She catches him off-guard just before disappearing back upstairs though. Turns back with her hand still on the door handle and frowns at him thoughtfully. A little tentatively. “Is there… anyone in your life who you’d want to hear what happened seven years ago from _you_? Just in case we can’t keep a lid on this?”

“I…” He runs down the list and comes up pretty empty. John, Edward, Mister Stevens. Adrienne knows _now_ , according to Lafayette. Anyone he’s still close with from the page days – Eliza, Hercules, namely – won’t be surprised in any case. Olivia got that story years ago.

As to his coworkers _here_ , he’d rather take his chances. Morris won’t give a fuck one way or the other. Which just leaves one person in mind. “I’ll take care of it,” he murmurs.

He’s barely back at his desk when Morris shouts for him. His boss is typing away, pausing occasionally to glance down at an open folder to his left, and he asks distractedly over the sound of keys clacking away, “What’s the deal with you and the vice president?”

“He thinks I’m violently impulsive with a bad attitude, and I think he’s a senseless nuisance. Sir.”

There’s another few seconds of typing, before Morris stops long enough to peer at him over the top of his glasses. “Is that all, then?”

“It’s enough to be getting on with, surely.”

“Hm,” he huffs. “Go away, Hamilton.”

Alexander bites his lip on the grin and backs straight back out of the door. “Yes, sir.”

“You know how much money I left in the private sector to come and help George Washington realize his economic vision for a better America?”

“Yes, sir,” he repeats with a chuckle, and pulls the door closed on the man’s griping.

 

x---x

The fact that Mercer somehow manages to fit him into his lunch plans _that very day_ signals to Alexander that he’s probably none too surprised to have gotten his phone call in the first place. They meet up at a quiet place near the metro station in Alexandria – he enjoys the long ride on the train to help clear his head, and then wonders what he was possibly thinking when he steps out of the station and realizes that it’s the same one where Thomas Conway once picked him up on late on an April afternoon not altogether unlike this one.

The older man already has a table in the dimly-lit café when Alexander walks in. He watches him, contemplative, as he navigates his way around and lowers himself down in the opposite chair. Unfolds his hands where they’re resting on the tabletop and says succinctly, “So.” 

“It’s been a weekend.”

“Apparently.” A server approaches and they pause, order some drinks. Mercer waits until he’s drifted back out of earshot before sighing. “I’ve known George Washington for a long time. It’s been far too many years since we served together, but my impression on the whole is that politics hasn’t _quite_ sunken its teeth into him yet.”

Though he concurs, Alexander doesn’t entirely follow his point. “Sir?”

“Just hoping you’re not about to tell me that the president is caving to the assorted rabble-rousing and foisting a new liaison on me.”

“Oh.” He hadn’t even thought to pose that question when he spoke very briefly with the president after Lafayette called him. He’s assuming he knows the answer though, all things considered. “No, I don’t think so.”

Mercer cocks a wry smile. “Heard your name on the news this morning.”

“Holy shit. Have I transcended from online-only content straight onto the morning talk shows?” Mercer just holds that same smile while the server comes back with a diet soda and Alexander’s coffee. A little curious, a little sad. “It’s complicated.”

“It sounds like it.”

They order. By the time the server disappears from sight, he’s forgotten what he chose entirely, and may as well have just pointed blindly at the menu. “I think… some part of me saw this coming? Back in December? Someone would see me being… me… and have this _oh hey, isn’t that the kid who…_ moment. It just took a more roundabout course getting there.”

Mercer’s gaze drifts down to where Alexander’s got his hands resting on the table. Fingers tapping quickly against the fabric of the table cloth, the sound muted. He flushes and tucks his fidgety hands under his knees instead. “And how are you now?”

“I’m alright. _Really_ ,” he assures him, when he gets a pointed stare at his too-quick response. “It’s… come up, a couple of times since. In hilariously different circumstances with hilariously different people and I think… I can deal with the fallout now. If that’s the inevitable conclusion of this whole shit show. Seven years removed, seven years older, it… my view is clearer. Looking back.”

“ _Is_ it the inevitable conclusion?”

He shrugs. “I really don’t know. Adams surely won’t risk pissing the president off any further. But I don’t know what sort of grudges anyone is looking to settle and I don’t know what sort of media outlet would _print_ it outright.”

“Yes, that would rather seem to cross a line, given the legalities in the moment.”

Self-conscious, he shrugs again. Downs a third of his coffee in one long sip and then looks around and forces a grin on his face and says, “So – what did the morning shows have to say about me?”

Mercer rolls his eyes but huffs out a soft laugh. “Check your ego, it was _one_ morning show.” His grin widens until Mercer caves. “As I recall, it was a gentle rebuke of Vice President Adams for making this little feud of yours rather more personal, and then a brief debate over whether your reported enrollment during _that_ term of the Page Program inspired your, ah… _enthusiasm_ for ethical governance today.”

“That’s a generous interpretation.”

“Well, the next person pointed out that if you got kicked out, it means you weren’t even around at the end when Conway got busted, so there was some debate on the matter.”

 

x---x

By Wednesday evening, he’s at least finding some humor in the situation. “You have a small but dedicated Twitter fanbase,” John informs him distractedly, scrolling through his phone. “Compliments of Josephine Dennie, undoubtedly.”

“Never underestimate how much young people enjoy old, white men being called _stupid_ to their faces,” he advises John sagely as he hangs up his jacket in the doorway and toes off his shoes.

“Do you want to hear about the haters?”

“Lemme grab the popcorn, hold on.” He doesn’t mention to John that he’s checked in on # _VPvHam_ Twitter a couple times a day since Sunday. Edward wanders in from his bedroom while he’s grabbing a soda from the fridge, and perches on the back of the couch while Alexander tucks himself along John’s side so they can peer at his phone together. “Okay, go.”

“Let’s see…” He scrolls back up to the top of a thread and starts to skim slowly down the line of comments. “ _Condescending, smarmy, full-of-himself…_ ”

“Where’s the lie?” Edward ruffles his hair and gets punched in the leg in return.

“Oh, here we go – _I don’t know about Conway but he must have slept with someone to get not one but TWO jobs at the White House_.”

“Did they poll?” Alexander asks drily. “Please tell me they polled.”

“Hm.” John sticks his tongue between his teeth as he reads. “No.” A few more seconds and then, “It seems like a pretty even tie between Washington and Lafayette in the replies.”

Edward cackles and nearly falls off the sofa. Alexander just makes a face.

“Oh cool, here’s a photo from Jefferson’s event with – oh, yep, there’s me, identified and everything.”

Probably from the State Department website. “Alexander Hamilton and dance partner.”

“How the tables have turned,” John laments.

Edward starts and points at one post. “ _Oh_ , here- oh my God.”

John bursts out laughing. Alexander scrambles to see what inspired the hysterics, but Edward snatches the phone out of his hand and reads, “ _There’s something screwy going on here – he’s either Washington’s illegitimate son or his rentboy, convince me I’m wrong._ ”  

“Oh my _God_. _People_.” But he can’t help but grin despite himself. “Let me just call up the president and ask if he vacationed in Saint Croix roundabout spring 2001.”

“I notice you aren’t addressing the other half of _RandomTwitterBro’s_ theory.” John narrows his eyes and keeps a straight face only until Alexander smacks a loud kiss on his cheek and then jabs him in the ribs.

When they finish wrestling, after a narrowly-avoided collision with the edge of the coffee table when they roll in a tangled heap off the couch, Alexander pulls out his phone and makes for the stairs so he can head up and change for the evening. Sees he has a missed call from Mister Stevens, and he sighs – probably ought have given the man a head’s up about the possibility of seeing his name pop up in the news this week but he kind of assumed Edward would have had him covered – and he makes a mental note to send him a quick message later, that he promptly forgets again when he opens the text message he has waiting from Olivia and falters at the foot of the stairs.

_From: Olivia W._

_Legget has the story._

“Yo,” Edward calls, digging through the assorted carryout menus pinned to the fridge. “Where’s the menu for that Mexican place on Belmont?”

“We didn’t end up going there,” John reminds him, thumbing through the spillover shoved inside the drawer next to the sink. “We went to the Vietnamese place on Columbia.”

“Oh. Dammit. Okay, Alex, what do you want from the pizza place on 18th?”

If there’s any logical progression to _that_ chain of thought, his brain is too loud all of a sudden to even try to sort it out. “You know what I like,” he murmurs, and shakes himself out of his daze and dashes up the steps.

He’s barely got the door closed before he’s stabbing at the call button on his screen; it’s barely started ringing before Olivia picks up. “ _Hey_.”

“Who’s his damn source?” he demands, and then regrets it instantly because if there’s one way to offend Olivia, it’s to question her professional integrity.

But she just sounds exhausted. “ _I don’t know and you have to know I wouldn’t tell you if I did._ ” She hesitates, and adds, “ _Anonymous. So he needs another one to corroborate before Coleman’ll run it_.”

_That_ lands like a kick in the gut, and he sinks down on the edge of the bed. “Why’s he running it at all?”

“ _I don’t know. I don’t know what the story says_.”

“But he’s found some _public interest_ angle to justify it beyond _area smart-mouth fucked by disgraced senator_?”

She doesn’t bother dignifying that with a response. “ _He thinks he’ll have it in time for Friday’s paper_.”

“Alright,” he sighs. “Alright. Thanks.”

“ _I’m sorry, Alex, I don’t… I don’t think he was digging, if it’s any… I think it just fell in his lap_.”

It’s not until they’ve exchanged terse farewells that the bizarreness of that fully hits him. There are only so many believable quarters from which such a claim could come, he’d spent the past three days reassuring himself of precisely that, convincing himself that in all likelihood, it’d be a couple uncomfortable weeks of unpleasant rumors and insinuations, before the collective consciousness would forget about Thomas Conway all over again, and…

And to have the story not just shopped out, but shopped straight to the paper where _he used to work_ …?

It has the slippery fingerprints of John Andre all over it, a belated _fuck you_ , and he slides into the desk chair and flips open John’s laptop. Assumes the man has slipped well-enough out of the public eye, and indeed finds that he reportedly relocated back to London a few years earlier. Charming his way into the good graces of the Tory party bosses, according to the _Guardian_.

It’s possible, he supposes, skimming the old article, but Legget doesn’t strike him so much the type to take the man’s call to begin with, let alone trust his allegations. Unless…

There’s a brief history of Andre’s work for the Democratic-Republican party. Most notably his years with Jefferson but Alexander never knew until now that he’d actually begun his work as a party operative under the preceding leadership of Robert Yates, and that name sparks something in his memory. Careful words, not quite an apology, watching the holiday traffic pass by on the Charleston freeway…

John Andre may very well have set his revenge into motion months ago, he realizes with grim satisfaction.

He’s skimming down his contacts, unsure if he even _has_ Henry Laurens’s number, when another call from Mister Stevens comes through. He sends it to voicemail, but a tingle of worry starts to worm its way through him, muted only by the fact that he knows damn well that Edward is right downstairs, bickering with John over pizza.

There’s a moment where he hovers on the edge of three choices – call Henry, chase down his suspicions; call Mister Stevens and apologize for not warning him about the news; or go downstairs and tell John and Edward what Olivia told him and let them get their outrage out of the way _now_ , when his phone buzzes with a text that refocuses his attention entirely towards a wholly unforeseen disaster that sends icy chills rippling down his spine.

_From: Tom Stevens_

_I just got off the phone with your brother. Please call me back Alex. Please._

He’d throw something if he had anything besides his phone on hand. If he wasn’t suddenly determined, in his abrupt frozen panic, that John and Edward remain blissfully ignorant of the storm brewing upstairs. Except it’s coming from all sides, and he can’t figure out which direction to turn to face it head-on, and _how_ , in all of the week’s tentative waiting on knife’s edge, did he forget entirely about James and Lucia and what shameful secrets would threaten to finally burst the dam of the impassable decade between them…

It didn’t _matter_ that nothing had been verified yet in the media; if his brother saw enough, in tying his name to Conway’s, to fear the worst, even _assume_ it. And after two years of Alexander’s indecisive distance, had reached out in the only logical direction.

He can _feel_ the stunned shock threaten to give way to a full-blown panic. So he forcibly channels it instead into a vague, directionless _anger_ , and jabs at his phone to ring his former guardian back. Rises from the bed and crosses to the bathroom, shuts and locks the door behind him just to put another barrier between him and his yet-clueless roommates downstairs, and doesn’t let Mister Stevens get further than a _just_ wrong sounding, “ _Alex_ -”

“Were you sleeping with my mother?”

Mister Stevens cuts off again just as abruptly. “… _what_?”

“I’m not going to be _mad_ if you say yes.” Neglects to mention the inexplicable fury that’s slowly building inside him, and the rational part in the back of his mind hates himself, hates that those years of pent-up anger are going to explode out in the least-deserving direction. “I just – it occurred to me? Sometime since I left? That it might… explain it.”

“ _Explain_ what?” the man asks desperately.

He shrugs listlessly, and sits with his back against the cold shower door. “Why you’d do it. Why you’d… add the responsibility of a fucked-up orphan to your life.”

The sound of a hitched breath carries over the line. “ _I saw you nearly every damn day of your life for five years_ before _Rachel died, don’t you think it’s possible I love you… just_ because _?”_

“I never knew _what_ to think!” he retorts, and then schools his tone, his volume, with effort. Listening for any attracted attention. “Don’t you understand that yet?” Another sharp sound, and he’s definitely crying, and Alexander can’t stop. “So were you?”

“ _For God’s sake, Alexander, what do you want me to say? We weren’t a couple._ ”

“So you _were_ sleeping together?”

There’s a long pause while Mister Stevens tries to collect himself. His voice is a little steadier, a little sharper in its frustration, when he says, “ _A few times,_ yes _. Alright? Jesus. We never wanted any of you boys to know._ ”

A harsh laugh escapes him and he shakes his head. “Neddy and I would have started planning your wedding. You didn’t want _James_ to know.” Silence. “Maybe if she hadn’t spent those last two years after dad left trying to shield me from James’s anger, things could have been different between us once she was dead.”

“ _I’m sorry_ ,” Mister Stevens whispers, and it’s… pointless. Makes his anger finally dissolve into a wash of nauseous guilt, because if there is one person in this whole saga who does not deserve his censure, it is surely this man who gave him a home, who gave him a _future_ again, and expected nothing in return. The man who made him take care of himself when he didn’t even want to after he came home angry and confused from D.C. seven years ago, and…

…and he thinks about coming home from Edward’s mother’s place one mid-May morning and finding George Washington in the Stevens house, and he thinks about a daybreak conversation with Mister Stevens on the back porch some ten months later, in which his guardian had finally seen, acknowledged something buried deep inside him, more than three years after taking him in and…

“ _Alexander?_ ”

…and he never knew what happened to it, to the stack of emails and explanations he’d foisted upon Madison seven years ago. Could never bring himself to ask.

“Yeah,” he responds blankly, automatically. “Yeah, I’m…” The pieces click together before he can even entirely follow his own train of thought. “He gave it to you, didn’t he? Washington. What I wrote about Conway when I left.”

“ _He didn’t know what else to do_.”

 “Did you read it?”

The ensuing quiet is damning enough confirmation, but Mister Stevens’s next words take him aback. “ _When I felt like I had to_.”

He lets out a slow, unsteady breath and wipes a hand over his face. “I want it.”

“ _Why_?”

_Because he had no right_ , he doesn’t say. _Because you should have given it back to me when I left_.

“Because someone’s writing a story and I want my own recollections of those events on hand.” True enough, if not the entirety of it. But Mister Stevens hesitates and another bout of frustration lances through him. “When have I ever asked you for anything?” Alexander realizes a moment too late that those words achieve little beyond cracking the man’s heart just a little bit further. “Tom. Please.”

 

x---x

It’s the hardest thing in the world, the next day. Waiting for Legget to do the obligatory reaching-out for a comment as he _knows_ is dictated by the _Evening Post_ ’s editorial guidelines. Watching the clock tick by through the afternoon, hoping to hell that if he _does_ get the story squared away in time for tonight’s deadline, as Olivia suspects, he pulls it together before the end of his workday. Forcibly fights down the urge to go storming up to the press corps offices on his own initiative, lest he get Olivia in trouble for blabbing to him.

He’s fidgety and distracted at work; almost as much so as he’d been last night once he rejoined John and Edward for their dinner antics. Paranoid every time Edward’s phone buzzed about what information his father might be imparting, struggling to find the words to explain to John without explaining, not yet, still trying to reconcile his own about-face from the resolve to sit back quietly and weather the storm to his determination to seize the damn narrative for himself.

He can’t say how much of that is due to his suspicions about Legget’s source, and how much is due to a vague and indescribable anguish at his abrupt certainty that there will never, ever be any bridging the chasm between he and his brother. The weight of all that happened _before_ James left had been enough to leave him fraught with indecision for two _years_ since their first contact; adding the impossible burden of all that had happened _after_ will surely snap that already-taut thread.

So he sits and tries to quiet his mind and _think_ , and snaps at John when he frets that Alexander’s abrupt mood shift is due to some belated offense at the things they’d laughed about on Twitter. It’s a relief he’d never dare voice when they go their separate ways for work the next morning, except then it’s hours of sitting and waiting and utterly failing to focus until the email he’s been waiting for _finally_ pings his inbox at twenty of five.

He skims the story quickly, unsurprised when ultimately it’s more of a story about Washington than himself. The _public interest_ angle. A story that rests heavily on the weight of insinuation and innuendo, and leaves readers to draw their own conclusions about his position in the White House today. A story designed to spark a firestorm of questions and digging, a story that takes the gaps that were left out seven years ago in the interest of protecting the identity of the student in question, and gives _just_ enough room to fill them in with the most uncharitable interpretation.

He has a sudden jolt back to that moment of stark fear, recognizing Benedict Arnold for the first time just moments before Washington slid a travel itinerary across the table, and the awful thought – _Did Washington know, too?_

It’s a story that suggests the _other_ answer to that question; or at least, if he didn’t know, that his first instinct was to simply make it go away.

Legget’s waiting for him when he makes his way upstairs after cutting out a few minutes early. Waves him immediately into one of the small rooms off the open press corps bullpen reserved for just this purpose, sensitive phone calls with sources, private conversations with editors, with staffers.

“You passed this on to the administration yet?” Alexander demands before Legget can even get a word of greeting in.

“No, I wanted to give you first crack.” He smiles apologetically, and Alexander wants to wipe it clean off his face. “Look, kid…”

“Get Coleman on the phone.”

“He’s already signed off on it, Alexander.”

“I don’t care. Get him on the phone.”

So Legget sighs and obliges. Alexander isn’t all too surprised when Coleman, busy as the man probably is, picks up almost straightaway, and figures he probably expected some pushback from either himself or the administration before day’s end. “ _Coleman_.”

“Hey, Mister C,” Alexander leans in. “Is Olivia in?”

A heavy sigh carries over the speaker. “ _Alexander. I’m_ sorry _, okay_?” He huffs an incredulous laugh. “ _My hands are tied. I can’t bury a story just because it’s about a former employee and claim to be an impartial arbiter of the news._ ”

“Due respect, sir, that’s bullshit – you’re so worried about impartiality that you’re going to run a _bad_ story on anonymous sources that have scores to settle with me and the administration.”

Legget bristles at his side. “You don’t know _who_ my sources are.”

“George Eacker,” Alexander fires back, and takes some dark delight at the speed with which Legget’s mouth snaps closed. “You covered the statehouse in Albany, but I’m guessing you picked up the federal beat from time to time. I don’t know if you’re lazy or desperate or both, and maybe he’s been a reliable source in the past, but I’ll bet Mister Coleman will have something to say about the conflict of interest that is sourcing this story from a guy who ran Robert Yates’s New York office while John Andre was running the one here in D.C.” There’s a protracted and awkward silence on both ends of the call while Coleman waits for Legget to defend himself and Legget stares at Alexander with an increasingly sour look on his face. “Run this story as is and I’ll scoop you five minutes to deadline and make you all look like idiots. Now get Olivia in the room.”

He does; must believe it’s not an idle threat, or took to heart Alexander’s accusations lobbed at both him and Legget, and after an _incredibly_ awkward five minutes or so on hold, waiting in a cramped room with a reporter who suddenly despises him quite fervently, the line reconnects and he just hears a wearied, “ _Alexander, what have you done_?”

“I saved your paper from waking up with egg on its face tomorrow, thank me later.”

“ _I haven’t agreed to pull the story_ ,” Coleman cuts in sharply. “ _Your objections have been taken under advisement, and you’re free to put as many of them on the record as you like_.”

“No,” Alexander returns evenly, “but you’re _going_ to pull it. And you’re going to run a different story, and you’re going to give it to Olivia.”

Legget snorts, and turns around and runs his hands through his hair, shaking his head slowly back and forth. “Jesus _Christ_ , kid, if Ebony Hazard could see you trying to boss around a media outlet -”

“ _It doesn’t work like that, Alexander_ ,” Olivia says slowly, after a brief pause. He can hear the consternation in her voice. “ _You know that, c’mon. And it’s… not even six hours to deadline besides_.”

“It’s not going to make it to print. Not tomorrow, anyway.”

He’s utterly confounded Coleman, he can tell. Legget is still just glaring daggers, Olivia isn’t saying anything at all, and he waits. Holds his ground until Coleman, frustrated, says, “ _You have no standing to make demands here, Alexander. Why in God’s name would I agree to that_?”

“Because I’m going to give her a _better_ story.” He pulls out his phone and taps a few times at the screen; addresses the email he saved this morning in the drafts of an old account he’s not touched in more than two years, and sends it her way. “It’ll be the _Evening Post_ ’s biggest day since you won a Pulitzer, with the added bonus of being _accurate_.”

Olivia must have her phone on hand, because it’s only a few moments before he hears her murmured, “ _What the f_ -?” Some shuffling on the other end of the line, and Legget shoots him a quizzical look, before Olivia comes back and breathes, “ _You asshole. You_ absolute _asshole_.”

“Sorry.”

“ _What am I looking at_?”

“The un-redacted document I gave to James Madison seven years ago. Everything that happened and every single email I exchanged with Thomas Conway during the semester.” He pauses, and clarifies, “It’s a scan of the original. I should have the hard-copy by Saturday.”

Legget butts in. “Which will be a lovely counter-piece to the view of the _adults_ who were in the room.”

“ _He’s right, Alexander_ ,” Coleman says apologetically.

“ _Bill_ ,” Olivia says quietly. Another pause follows, broken only by the sound of muffled footsteps, the occasional ringing of a distant phone in the background. The speaker crackles, like someone’s put their hand over the receiver on the other end, and there’s a half-minute of indistinguishable harsh whispers before Olivia comes back and says bluntly, “ _Will shares the byline. That’s my condition. It’s too much to go through in a night for one person anyway._ ”

“Fine.”

“Bill!” Legget demands, outraged, but Coleman is quiet on the other end. Distracted reading, or shocked into silence, or a little bit of both.

Alexander hoists his bag up onto his shoulder and turns for the door. “Olivia has my number. Call me if you need any clarifications while you’re writing.”

He’s already out the door before Legget stops him with a quiet, “Alexander?” He sighs and turns back, catches the door as it swings closed and cocks a brow, impatient. “Eacker _gave_ me the story; don’t you want to know who sold you out to corroborate it?”

He smiles tightly. “I have my suspicions.”

The door snaps closed behind him with Legget on the other side.


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Umm... Alexander gotta Alexander, hard.  
> (I think I stole that from _nightshiftblues_ )

He means to give John more than a vague warning that, “It’s going to be a story.”

He means to give him more than three minutes to process it before he has to dash out the door for patient rounds.

He means to quiet his mind long enough the night before, mentally composing something he dares not put to paper yet, to have a more pointed heart-to-heart.

He means to apologize for _not_ doing so as John rushes to get ready in the morning, and instead finds himself wracked by guilt and into silence by what he plans on doing _next_.

He means to give him more than, “It’s going to be a story.”

John freezes with his coffee halfway to his lips, eyes wide. “Are you sure?”

“…yeah.”

The coffee lands on the counter with a quiet _clink_ and he finds himself folded carefully into his boyfriend’s arms, and a soft voice in his ear, “You going to be okay?”

He thinks so, actually, yes. Can’t foresee where he’ll stand as far as work goes, by the end of the day, but there’s something… freeing, in it. _Telling_ the story, in his way.

But John’s alarm goes off just a couple minutes later, barely enough time for quick reassurances and lingering hugs, yelling at him to be on his way.

Once the door’s closed behind him again, Edward already an hour gone, Alexander spins on his heel and returns up the stairs. Fires off a quick email to Morris letting him know that he’s taking a sick day – something that’ll be sure to raise some brows in its own right – and then starts piecing together a rough draft of the composition occupying his head since the afternoon prior.

When the clock strikes eight, he decides it’s late enough in the morning to make his next call. Too early for classes, but he remembers the man’s tendency to hunker down in his office and grade in the quiet early hours before most students had even rolled out of their beds.

Indeed, he sounds distracted when he picks up, like perhaps he’s caught him midway through a paper for his American public policy course when he murmurs, “ _Good morning, Alexander, to what do I owe the pleasure_?”

He swallows thickly. “Hi, Professor. I was hoping you could help me with something.”

“ _Say the word, I’ll see what I can do_.”

Paine means it too, is the thing that makes him bite his lip and choke down the guilt for putting him in this position. “I’m looking for a phone number. I’d settle for an email address.”

“ _Hm_.” There’s a short pause and then his tone changes, like he’s put down his work and sat up, directed his focus more fully on the conversation at hand. “ _Someone on staff_?”

“Someone,” he corrects softly, “who I believe was a contemporary of yours at Princeton.” Silence, a silence that stretches on too long to be mistaken for simple confusion. “Were you friends?”

“ _Christ, Alexander_.” He holds his ground, and hears Paine sigh heavily over the line. “ _Not really. Friendly acquaintances, we ran in the same circles. He was a couple years behind._ ”

“Public affairs by day, undergrad affairs by night?” More silence. “Sorry.”

After a moment, he asks, “ _Why on earth would you want to get in touch_?”

“Because I’ve done something exceedingly stupid, and it only seems sporting.”

“ _You think you owe him that_?”

He bites his lip and he exhales heavily through his nose. It’s the question that’s kept him jittery with anxious guilt since it occurred, the day prior, that his was not the only privacy about to be thrown to the curb. Never mind how thorough of a well-deserved beating it had taken seven years ago. “No,” he manages after a long moment. “No, I don’t think I _owe_ him anything. But it’s been seven years, and I threw him under the bus once already with no warning and… I don’t know. He’s moved on. I’d like to imagine he’s…”

He’s _what_ , Alexander asks himself. _Better? Wiser?_ More self-controlled, _maybe_ , it was no lack of smarts that got him elected to the Senate by thirty-five. Despite their philosophical differences, it was undeniably the man’s willingness to engage Alexander’s eager mind that had first drawn him into his orbit, it’s never been a question of the Conway’s intellectual savvy.

“I don’t know,” he repeats in a mumble. “Maybe I just have something to prove.”

“ _To_ whom _?_ ” Paine pleads.

“Myself.”

The ensuing silence lasts so long that Alexander begins to worry that he somehow lost the call. But he stubbornly waits him out and lets out a quiet breath that isn’t quite relief when Paine sighs, “ _Alright. I’ll make a call._ ”

“Thank you.”

 

After that, he packs up his computer and heads to the metro. Rides a few stops and changes trains, and then another few before he arrives at the Capitol South station that’s situated just a couple of blocks from his old dorm at Webster Hall. As he ascends the escalator back up into the open air, he checks his phone, anxiously waiting for any new calls or texts that may have come through during the ride and its spotty service, but there’s nothing from Paine. Nothing from Morris about his sudden sick day, nothing from Hazard or Lafayette to suggest they’ve caught wind of his sudden madness.

Just a brief message from Olivia telling him to check his email so he can read over the final draft of the _Evening Post_ ’s story.

It’s a quick walk to the Library of Congress. He meanders his way slowly into one of the two auxiliary buildings and wanders up the stairs. Curious if they’ve changed it at all, if this space is still largely overlooked – it’s not, and the pair of young women sitting in the little alcove that overlooks Second Street look like college students, maybe interns, computers propped on their laps while they chat too faintly to make out words. So he heads across the hall to the mirrored space with the decidedly less scenic view to the east and sets up shop there.

After he sends Olivia his thumbs-up on the story, he returns to his earlier composition and works diligently for another half-hour before his phone buzzes with a text from Paine.

_From: T.Paine_

_This was a good number a few years ago._

_609-xxx-xxxx_

He sends back his thanks and then puts through the call before he can begin the process anew of second-guessing himself. Still finds his voice caught in his throat when, sounding far more distracted than Paine had upon taking his call, he hears a click and a murmured, “ _Hello?_ ”

It occurs to him very abruptly that he has no idea what the man’s made of his life since his disgraced exit from the Senate. He never _wanted_ to know, was glad when his face stopped popping up every which way he looked on the news, didn’t ask when they crossed paths in New York nearly four years ago.

“ _Hel-?_ ”

“I’m in the Library,” he blurts, cutting him off. “S’pretty much the same. Somebody in our spot, though.”

The silence that follows is very different from Paine’s reluctant disbelief. There’s no hint of a question in Conway’s voice when he says evenly, “ _Alexander_.”

“We were really pretty reckless, weren’t we? Long before we ever made it to -”

“ _Who gave you this number?_ ”

His tone is frustrated, but sounds like it’s born more out of resignation than anger, and Alexander can only guess at the tedium of this week’s news dragging the whole sordid thing back to light after the world had by-and-large moved on. “Someone with Princeton alumni connections.”

If Conway saw his congressional interview performance, he knows about his connection with Paine; regardless, he doesn’t press any further, and after another protracted pause, starts, “ _I wish_ …” and then cuts off and swears softly under his breath. “ _I wish there were a way to spare you this._ ”

“You know about the story?”

“ _My lawyer said someone had been in touch. We have a longstanding_ no comment _policy_.”

“Well. Maybe he should have taken that call. I gave them everything.”

It’s more curiosity than censure in Conway’s voice. “ _Why_?”

He pulls his feet up onto his chair and props his chin on his knees. Stares out the vast windows over the quiet chaos of the city below. “Because I’m the only one who _can_ tell the story. The real story.”

“ _The president doesn’t need your protection, Alexander_.”

“Well,” he sighs. “He’s spent enough time protecting me, so. It is what it is. I’m tired of being _afraid_ of the secret. The world’ll move on soon enough.” He remembers his startled shock, seeing Conway sitting in a coffee shop in Midtown. Just another anonymous face in a sea of millions. “It did for you, didn’t it?”

“ _I suppose_.” And then he amends, “ _In some ways more than others, perhaps_.”

“Well, then I suppose it will again.”

“ _Alexander, why did you call?_ ”

“Because I wanted to extend a courtesy I was never offered,” he snaps, veneer of apathetic calm vanished in an instant. “What did John Andre say to you, anyway? The day he pulled me off the floor. What did he say that worried you so much and sent you searching for reassurances or ultimatums?”

Conway’s voice is a little shaky when he answers, but he answers without hesitation. “ _He told me you were… distracted. But not scared. That my fate likely lay in the balance between your sense of justice and your interests of reputation._ ”

A soft huff slips past his lips. “ _Justice_ ,” he echoes. “The single reassurance I asked of you in turn.”

“ _I’m_ -” To his credit, Conway manages to cut himself off before he says _sorry_. Recognizes the woeful inadequacy of the word.

“The fucking _proctor_ at Webster knew what was happening. Do you understand how fucked up that is? Do you understand that -?”

He breaks off and pinches at the bridge of his nose. Squeezes his eyes closed and wills the angry tears back.

“ _Do I understand_ what _?_ ” Conway sighs.

Softly, whispered like a confession, he admits, “That if I hadn’t realized about Arnold and Andre, I’d never have said a word?”

“ _And where would we be_ now _, Alexander?_ ” He flinches and presses his forehead to the tops of his knees, dragging in unsteady breaths. “ _Hm? Me still on the Hill? You in George Washington’s White House, watching and wondering and wracked with guilty indecision because of what you know?_ ”

But he wouldn’t _be_ in Washington’s White House, in that scenario. His absolute conviction of that fact, he is keenly aware, plays no small part in fueling his determination to burn the whole thing to the ground once and for all.

 

x---x

George Washington has known Gilbert Lafayette for more than two decades.

Has worked closely by his side for the latter half of that time. Knew him first as an eager young lieutenant who lied so convincingly about his English proficiency that he seized a highly sought-after position with NATO in Brussels, and then fumbled by long enough on context and careful observation and some help from his bemused francophone companions that he achieved damn near fluency; and regardless, had wormed his way into Washington’s heart some time before that.

He’s seen Lafayette elated on the night of the culmination of a successful presidential campaign, and wounded in a military hospital in Germany, and listened to him fret over and over about how to propose to his wife and whether she would say yes. Saw him vomit the first time he listened in on a radio call with a mission gone wrong, and heard the sounds of surprise and then the heavy _nothing_ of the ones who got lucky.

He’s known Gilbert Lafayette a long time, and he’s learned to read a great deal in the set of his eyes, the pull of his mouth. Yet the expression on his chief of staff’s face, when he sidles back into the room at the tail end of Washington’s call with the king of Morocco, is one he cannot decipher, save to intuit that something has gone horribly wrong.

So he rids himself quickly as possible of Tilghman, the translator, the embassy attaché, and asks upon the final snap of the closing door, “What’s happened?”

Lafayette sits heavily on the sofa in the middle of the room. Wipes a hand over his mouth and sucks in a steadying breath, and his reluctance to speak at all puts Washington further on edge. He rises from the desk and comes to join the younger man, sits facing him from the other sofa and waits him out.

“The, ah… the document that Alexander gave James Madison.” He nods slowly. “It is online.”

He groans. Sits back and rubs his hands over his face. “Call Philip Schuyler.” Lafayette blinks at him, confused. “It got filed with the rest of the investigation paperwork with Senate Ethics. See if he knows yet, and if he can figure out who took it.”

“No…” Lafayette counters slowly. “No, it’s… _all of it_ , George. The whole thing.” He stares, wide-eyed, and Lafayette pulls out his phone and thumbs the screen on. “Names and emails and – everything.”

Washington snatches the phone away and scrolls quickly through. Nothing redacted, nothing blacked out, and his mind buzzes blankly, uncertainly. “Has… does Alexander know?”

He shrugs, helpless. “His phone’s off. I sent Morris a message to send him up but I haven’t heard back.

A rush of fury and befuddled outrage leave him fumbling. A certain share of guilt too, to be sure, recalling Lafayette’s frustration with Adams, with Washington’s inability to keep the boy at arm’s length and avoid putting him in precisely this position and…

He sighs. Defeated. “ _Online_ ,” he echoes. “Where? Who uploaded it?”

“Well,” Lafayette murmurs, “that’s the thing, and you’re not going to like it.” He cocks an expectant brow. “Publius.”

“ _What_?” And _then_ he understands the look of grim determination on Lafayette’s face, his mind follows the same awful track, and he barks, “Get Madison on the phone. _Now_.”

He stands up and paces angrily about the Oval in the short time it takes Lafayette to get hold of the congressman. Isn’t willing to lob a complete accusation straight off the bat, but Madison clearly knows the source of their consternation when he answers almost instantly with a halting, “ _Gil_ …”

“James,” Lafayette returns evenly. “I’m with the president, are you alone?”

“ _I’m… I have a minute. Mister President_.”

“What the _hell_ is going on, James?”

“ _Sir…_ ”

“You stood on a stage last year and declared that you knew who was behind this damn pseudonym. You were the sole person responsible for that document seven years ago, and today, this _Publius_ just _happens_ to break a two-year silence to post the whole damn thing for the world to see?”

“ _Mister President…_ ”

“Is it you, then?”

By the gentle huff of disparagement, he’s somewhat inclined to believe Madison’s emphatic, “No.”

“But you _do_ know who did it.”

Madison goes quiet for a long moment. Washington resists the urge to snap at him, to pry the information from him through the sheer power of his office, and then feels another snarl of fury when he finally says softly, “ _Due respect, Mister President, but you’re missing the obvious._ ”

“Pray tell,” Lafayette prompts him, head slumped back on the back of the sofa, eyes closed.

“ _I_ wasn’t _the only person in possession of the document_.” Washington blinks in surprise at the phone perched on the coffee table. “ _When I was done, sir, I gave it to_ you.”

“Yes,” he retorts, “And I passed it immediately on to -”

Lafayette hops up and swears loudly in the dumbfounded silence that follows his abrupt realization. Washington can’t even fully parse the strange mix of emotions that bounce through him – incredulity, a complete and utter confusion, no small amount of pride, even.

Mostly, he just wonders if it ought have been obvious long before now.

He circles back around and sits heavily back on the sofa and murmurs, “My God.”

Madison takes a moment to collect his thoughts, and then says carefully, “ _The_ wisdom _of the maneuver aside, this is… it’s Hamilton’s doing. His decision._ ” Silence. “ _Sir?_ ”

“Yes,” he says blankly. “Yes, alright. I – my apologies, James.”

“ _I quite understand, and share in your frustration, sir_.”

That frustration maybe doesn’t reach its peak until about ten minutes later, after they’ve hung up the call with Madison. Hazard walks in the room, looking supremely done with her job, and slaps a print-out on his desk of an article that the _New York Evening Post_ just dropped online.

**Publius Speaks Out**

_Acclaimed political blogger revealed to be White House staffer, former_ NYEP _researcher, and Senate page at center of 2018 Conway scandal_

**** _by **William Legget** and **Olivia Wolcott**_

And about three minutes after that, Lafayette gets a message from downstairs and looks wholly unsurprised when he flatly relays, “Alexander emailed Morris about five minutes before he uploaded the document and offered his resignation.”

 

x---x

Madison smacks the button on his phone to end the call, and then shakes his head slowly at the other occupant of his office, silent for the duration of the conversation with Washington. “That man would move mountains for you.”

“I never asked for that.”

For all his prickly pride, the defensive stiffness to his posture where he leans against the closed door, arms crossed over his chest, Alexander doesn’t look entirely unaffected by the scene.

“So what do you do now?”

A sardonic smile quirks the corner of his mouth, and his hunched posture unfolds and then practically melts as he slumps into a chair opposite him at the desk. “Dunno. Wait and see if Morris accepts my resignation, I suppose.”

“You really think the president would let him?”

But Alexander just shrugs. Uncertain and uncomfortable, all bravado aside now that the deed’s been done. “It doesn’t matter. After going to college on a full ride, and two and a half years of paying next to nothing in rent thanks to John’s parents, I have enough savings to take some time and figure it out.” He could do anything, Madison realizes. Even still; even after today. Perhaps even _more so_ after today, with or without Washington’s patronage. “And,” he continues, tone odd, staring across the desk like he’s trying to click together some final piece of the puzzle, “you still got what you wanted, keeping me – Publius – out of any further discourse about Jefferson’s resignation.”

Madison opens his mouth to argue – because _this_ , none of it, is anything he could have dreamed up in his wildest imaginings, much less _wanted._ But Alexander barrels on ahead, a harder glint to his eye. “And Jefferson got what he wanted, didn’t he? Friction between Washington and Adams and, after your _Beltway Nostradamus_ bullshit screwed over his plans to step quietly aside ahead of the primaries, he managed to shift the Publius association entirely from _his_ political calculations to Adams picking a fight with an oh-so-tragically abused boy.”

He stares. And frowns, and shakes his head slowly back and forth. “I never told Thomas about Publius.”

Alexander just laughs. Incredulous, derisive. “Everyone else thought you were making a wild claim to boost your public profile, but Jefferson knows you better than anyone, doesn’t he? He would know you weren’t lying. How long do you think it took him to put it together? How many college kids did you know in New York City back then?”

“I…” He wants to object, to deny the possibility outright. But then he thinks about Alexander’s blog, when Jefferson was announced as the next Secretary of State three years ago; the startling theory, that Jefferson had risked ending his political career entirely in a gamble that Washington would later reward his introspection and integrity and leave him better poised for a run for president.

He laughed it off, and then when Jefferson confessed his intention to resign and contemplate a run, thought back to Publius only in terms of keeping the hotheaded Hamilton out of a legal mire, lest he be struck with the urge to revisit the subject via his long-retired pseudonym.

And as Jefferson’s frustrations mounted with the resurrected blog, the questions and the speculation while he planned his retreat back to Virginia… he never asked.

Perhaps didn’t _want_ to know the answer, in the end.

“I’ll never know if I’m right,” Alexander concedes bluntly, and drags himself back out of his chair. Hoists his computer bag onto his shoulder and pauses, looking over his shoulder as he makes for the door. “All I’m saying is – _someone_ told Adams what he risked dragging up. Someone whose word he’d have trusted and, if I’m not wrong, about then _and_ now– someone who had _already_ proven himself willing to risk everything.

“And Adams took the bait; and I took mine, because when all is said and done – I’d _still_ take Jefferson over Adams next year, if it comes down to it. So – here we are.”

 

x---x

 

**Is This How You’ll Remember Me?**

_18 April 2025_

_Relax, everyone. The only person I’ve outed here is myself, and if you haven’t seen the story yet from the_ Evening Post:

_[link]_

_Loses a lot of the mystique to put a real life name and face to these words, doesn’t it? To know I’m just any other person with real world bullshit to deal with day-to-day._

_Maybe it helps you understand my determination to remain anonymous when I started this blog 5+ years ago. If you read through the whole sordid document I posted an hour ago and if you remember the ensuing fiasco from 7 years ago, you know that a lot of people named therein lost jobs, whole careers._

_The full context of some of those firings was never made public. Accusing senior staffers of orchestrating the expulsion of the student involved would have told the entire Hill that it was me, and then-Senator Washington and then-Senator Jefferson wanted to give me that privacy; were willing to risk future questions about their motivations._

_I don’t know where I’d be today without that consideration from them_ then _; but when certain characters – they know who they are – sought to use my fear of exposure and the administration’s commitment to not relitigating those events in the public forum to insinuate slanderous misconduct on the parts of the very people who acted quickly and assertively to address the matter at hand? It occurred that I am better equipped now, 7 years older and (hopefully) 7 years wiser, to stand my own ground._

_So – there it is. The chronicle of how an innocent relationship built on one thing slowly slid into something else entirely, and it’s probably shockingly mundane, our correspondence. Maybe that’s important. It felt wrong, but I didn’t feel_ wronged _. Not until it was all said and done, anyway, and even then, the notion that I’d been wronged by Conway himself didn’t fully set in until later. Once I got some help sifting through the chaos of my own brain._

_Perhaps even took until we crossed paths again by wholly random happenstance, to finally and fully accept it._

_And so – wherever I go from here, today begins another new chapter. I spent enough time when I was 16 worrying about people discovering that secret, and it’s enough now. A secret exposed, and the pseudonym_ Publius _buried for good._

 

_Which just leaves me – your obedient servant –_

_-A.Ham_

X---X

The house is quiet when he falls back inside just after one. He throws his computer over the back of the couch, and heads for the kitchen to fill a glass of water. Leans over the sink and drinks it down, willing the adrenaline to settle.

Once he finishes that glass and then fills another, he cringingly turns his phone back on. Cringes harder as it buzzes almost instantly with an alert about a half dozen missed calls, and then vibrates repeatedly in his hand as a slew of texts belatedly arrive. The usual suspects – John, Edward, Morris, Lafayette. Paine. A couple of quick messages from Eliza and Hercules. A long one from Mister Stevens he doesn’t dare read just yet.

With a sigh, he pulls up John’s thread. Just a couple of quick and alarmed queries from right after the first blog post and a missed call, so he sucks in a deep breath and presses the phone to his ear, doubts that John’ll even be able to pick it up on no notice.

…and then the sound of it ringing echoes down the stairs and he freezes with his phone in one hand and his glass halfway to his mouth in the other.

He puts the glass in the sink and takes the stairs two at a time and then turns and stops in the doorway of their bedroom. John’s sitting at the desk, the chair turned partway around, a stack of pages in his hand that he continues scanning diligently through after he surely noticed Alexander’s abrupt arrival.

“You’re home.”

Voice strange, John reads off the paper, “ _I would, but John’s started to sort of pay attention. After the Saturday night debacle_.”

“Hey…”

“Started,” he repeats, shaking his head, “to sort of pay attention.” Alexander takes another step into the room but doesn’t say anything else. Struggles to try to decipher John’s tone, his mood. “Harry just messaged me. Said he’s impressed by my poker face; and he wants your autograph.” He huffs softly. “ _Henry Laurens’s son, and dance partner_.”

It’s the wrong thing to ask, but the only thing Alexander can drum up is, “Does it matter?”

“I don’t know,” John rests the packet on his lap and finally looks up at him, eyes red-rimmed. “I don’t… you know, I never read it? I mean, Marty and Angelica sent me the thing about the wedding, but I never… felt like I needed some random, supposed kid my own age to inform me about politics. So I never read it. And now…” he wipes angrily at his eyes. “Now I can _hear_ your voice. Your intonation, your… verbosity, when you really get going.”

He sniffs and picks the packet back up and flips further back to the front. “I can hear you here, too. _After getting up and dressed and ready to go to work, now I’ll never be able to go back to sleep, and have resigned myself to my usual morning coffee._ ” Alexander swallows. “And then the pages were gone that night so I couldn’t _sort of pay attention_. And you went to the Library anyway. And everything unraveled.”

_I’d never have said a word…_

“What do you want me to say?”

“Nothing,” John bites. “Nothing at all.” He slaps the pages down on the desk and puts his head in his hands. “You know, until I read this through, waiting for you to finally come wandering on home, I’d entirely forgotten that the event at the Archives involved Conway at all. I don’t think I _ever_ realized, when you showed me the invitation, that he’d _emailed the damn thing_ to you.” Alexander swallows thickly. Cautious in this sudden new minefield; hadn’t taken the time to fully consider how intertwined with those events John was, even if his name rarely appears in the document. “And you just – invited me along like it was nothing.”

“It _was_ nothing. _Then_.”

“Not to _him_ , apparently,” he smacks his hand on top of the packet, and Alexander knows what he’s referring to. His recounting of the events that, retrospectively, seemed relevant to the unfolding fiasco.

He knows what he’s referring to, but doesn’t quite grasp what he’s getting at. “I’m… sorry, I’m sorry I couldn’t see what he was -”

“ _No_ ,” John cuts him off, looking still more distraught. “Jesus Christ, Alex, that’s not – we were close. Is the thing. Really close. And then something happened to you that night, and the thing with my father happened, and it was never quite right between us, and then two months later, I was _sort of paying attention_.” Alexander sinks carefully onto the bed and watches him nervously. “It’s just… a _lot_ , okay? It’s a lot to process.”

“I’m sorry.”

“And I get it, I think? Why you’d put this out there, given the alternatives of speculation and innuendo. But I try to wrap my head around that but then I have to reconcile it with this whole _other_ thing you never told me about and I just…”

Alexander sighs. “ _No_ one knew about the blog, John.”

“Fuck off,” he rebukes mildly, “James Madison knew.” The inevitable next question strikes Alexander just before John asks it. “So who were the other two?” His stomach sinks. “It says three people knew, when you shelved the thing. Olivia Wolcott?”

“No. Um.” He clears his throat. “John Jay.”

“Who the hell is…?”

“University president. Columbia,” he adds, probably unnecessarily. “Um.”

John cocks a slow, cool brow. Staring across the few feet between the desk and the bed, where Alexander pulls his legs up to sit cross-legged, gaze cast down to his lap. “Alexander?”

He bites his lip and admits quietly, “Conway.”

“Ah-ha.”

“It’s not… we just… ran into one another.”

“Yeah,” John says evenly, sliding his phone back off the desk and peering at the screen. “You mentioned that on the internet.”

“I didn’t – he’d read it and _knew_. He just…”

John shakes his head and drops his phone again with a clatter. “What does that say about me, d’you figure?”

“John.”

“You promised me,” he glares, eyes wet. “When we agreed… you _promised_. That you wouldn’t hide from me like this again. If something was wrong.”

He throws up his hands in frustration. “Nothing’s wrong.”

John rises from the chair and stands there hunched over, hands propped on the desk. Sucking in calming breaths. “Lafayette called looking for you. He said you _quit your job_.”

Maybe Washington _did_ let Morris accept his resignation, then. “I’m _fine_ ,” he protests softly.

“Well _I’m_ not!” John exclaims, whirling around to face him. “I’m not, okay? This isn’t Webster, Alexander. This isn’t John Andre and Benedict Arnold pulling strings to get rid of you and keep you quiet. This is me, and Edward and… Laf and Addy and… people who _love you_ , Alexander. People you can _trust_. Why won’t you?”

A knot of guilt burns hot in his gut. “I…”

“You know what,” John wipes at his face again and moves around the bed for the door. “I can’t do this. I can’t be here right now.”

“ _John_.”

And then he’s gone without a backward glance, pulling the door closed behind him. Alexander doesn’t move from the bed, frozen by uncertainty, desperate to chase after him, to call him back and demand to know how to make this right.

In the end, he just sits and listens, and flinches when he hears the sharp snap of the front door echo up the stairs.

 

x---x

 

About three hours later – after another two missed calls from Lafayette, one from Edward, and finally one from Washington that has him chucking his phone angrily across the bed – Edward taps twice on the door and sticks his head inside.

Alexander’s only moved as much as is minimally necessary to use the bathroom, to change into a pair of pajama pants and a hooded sweatshirt and flop back down on the bed. He doesn’t even bother getting under the blankets, just stares broodingly up at the ceiling and murmurs, “Go ‘way.”

Edward just snorts and moves further into the room. Pauses at the desk and glances through the papers there, and Alexander bites down the strange impulse to tell him to leave it be; as if he couldn’t simply look at where he posted it online, for the whole world to see.

The silence eventually becomes too much as he reads, and Alexander asks him sullenly, “Talk to John?”

“Yup,” he answers neutrally, and then raises his eyes over the top of the paper and adds: “Talked to dad, too.”

That was surely inevitable. He averts his gaze, mumbles, “Fine,” and rolls over onto his side. “Now go ‘way.”

At the first footsteps, panic claws at his throat, because he didn’t really mean it, and the thought of Edward leaving him too, off to spend his Friday night with Hester while he broods alone in the oppressive quiet… it’s almost too much to bear.

But then weight descends on the bed. Kicked-off shoes thump down onto the floor, and Edward shifts up to stretch out by his side. Close enough he can hear his quiet breathing behind him, not so close as to touch, and he waits. Alexander can feel the stare boring into the back of his head until he gives in and sighs, rolls over onto his other side and meets his steady gaze.

“Why don’t you start at the beginning,” Edward prompts quietly, and the tears finally come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, _Avyncentia_ \- your prediction tally -  
>  half-credit for 1[subidea 2], wherein Alex lays out all cards, but there is no papering over of anything at all and everything is awful.  
> Full credit for 2, and I'll spot you the publication discrepancy, and full credit for 2[subidea]  
> lol on 3.  
> XD
> 
> I'm mad impressed at your possibilities tabulation last chapter, and of course am curious how the wild card is received. :D


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which, if there's one thing Gilbert Lafayette has learned from the past 7 years, it's that letting Alexander Hamilton slink off into the ether ends well for nobody.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...and all that is left is the [Potomac].
> 
> (sorry, _Avyncentia_ )

Edward heads downstairs when his efforts to rouse Alexander the next morning, after the better part of a full day confined to his bedroom, are met with continued failure. The scent of brewing coffee wafts up quickly enough, and he waits him out for about a half-hour before conceding further defeat and returning with a mug.

The mug goes on the bedside table, and then a banana lands on the pillow next to Alexander’s head. “ _Seriously_ ,” Edward tells him, “eat something or I’ll kick your ass.” He grabs the offending fruit and peels it as aggressively as possibly before shoving half of it in his mouth while holding Edward’s stare with steady challenge. “Am I going to have to drag you to the shower, too?”

“Let’s keep our expectations reasonably low today, shall we?” he says, except he says it around a mouthful of banana and Edward just looks on, unimpressed.

“You are not spending the entire weekend in bed, and if you try, I’m going to spend the entire weekend right here telling you to move your ass.” Alexander shoves the rest of the banana in his mouth in lieu of providing a satisfactory response to that. Edward sighs and sits on the edge of the bed. “John will be back. He’s working some shit out, and if you don’t think some of that shit is his own seven-years-old guilt, you’re not as bright as you seem.”

“We probably can’t rule that out anyway.”

Edward groans in frustration and pops right back up onto his feet. “Drink your coffee,” he barks. “And then you have _one hour_ to show some progress towards personal hygiene, or I’m having Hester bring takeout and we’re going to have a picnic on your bed.”

“Get something I like, ‘kay?”

“ _Gah_.” He throws up his hands in defeat and disappears again.

 

He does move, eventually. After washing the banana down with the whole cup of coffee. Unsure if his hour is up, because his phone died sometime in the night where Edward tossed it on John’s nightstand and he has no alternative way to tell the time.

So he plugs it in, and then sequesters himself in the bathroom to avoid hearing the ping of any new texts or calls, or possibly to save himself the heartache of discovering there _are_ none. A quick glance in the mirror forces him to reluctantly concede that Edward may have something of a point, and he runs the shower, lets it heat up while he brushes his teeth and then peels himself out of his sweaty pajamas.

The water’s just shy of scalding when he steps in, and reluctant as he is to admit it, that feels pretty glorious on muscles stiff with the better part of a day’s disuse. He spends far too long in there probably, but figures he’s already fulfilled the terms in order to _not_ have an Edward and Hester picnic on his bed, so he takes his time and does his best to try not to start spiraling in worry for what the _rest_ of his day holds.

A step or two at a time while he tries to refocus after the personal, professional, and emotional earthquakes of the day prior. And the current step is feeling moderately more human again and perhaps finding a tenuous middle-ground between his desire to mope and Edward’s determination to keep an eye out.

Ten minutes later, a towel wrapped around his waist, trying to decide between a half-assed attempt to look dressed for the day and no attempt at all, he steps back through the door into the bedroom and –

“Jesus _fucking_ Christ.”

His unexpected interloper is sitting at the foot of the bed, one hand shielding his peripheral vision as he asks distractedly, “Are you decent?”

Alexander just stares at him dumbly, and then down at his own semi-clad form. “I mean. _Enough_ I guess.”

The hand falls away, and Lafayette spares a quick glance and a bemused half-smile in his direction before returning his attention predominantly to the phone in his other hand. “You are a difficult man to get a hold of, my friend.”

“I was ignoring you.”

“Oui, je sais.”

“And then my phone died.”

“If only,” Lafayette fixes him with an unimpressed stare, “there were a device.” Alexander glares, and a faint smirk quirks Lafayette’s mouth and, okay, he must make for a pretty absurd picture right about now. “Get dressed. If you’re quite done swinging a wrecking ball through your life in the name of proving yourself smarter than every enemy, real and imagined, we have places to be.”

The urge to kick him out dissipates with a resigned sigh as Lafayette goes back to his phone. So Alexander grabs a few items from his dresser, his closet, and then disappears back into the bathroom and snarks, “So I take it _you’ve_ spoken with John, too.”

A faint snort of laughter sounds through the mostly-closed door. “He and Addy stayed up half the night baking. We could now feed a small army on cupcakes and cobbler.”

“She make those madeleines you like?”

“No, she very pointedly did _not_.” Alexander steps back into the bedroom in a long-sleeve t-shirt and jeans, damp hair dripping occasionally down his forehead and neck. “Now – grab a bag. Couple changes of clothes. Some time away from the city would do you well, I am thinking.”

Alexander stares. “Are you kidnapping me?”

“Without reservation or apology.”

“I…” He glances around the room, dumbfounded. “Don’t you have like… _work_ to worry about?”

“If only,” Lafayette reiterates drily, rising to his feet and pocketing his phone, “there were a device. Quickly, now.” He turns and makes for the door. “I will be downstairs making the acquaintance of the charming young lady whose path I crossed at the door.”

Indecision holds him in place for a minute after he’s gone. The urge to return to bed and resume his moping is strong, but the thought of Edward _and_ Hester _and_ Lafayette teaming up mostly saps the fight out of him.

He’s at least vaguely reassured that John only made it as far as the Lafayette house, and so he grudgingly starts tossing some things in a small duffel. Snatches his phone charger out of the wall and throws the whole thing in there since there’s barely enough battery to keep it on anyway. After pulling on a pair of socks and fishing his tennis shoes out from under the bed, he trudges down the stairs towards the sound of low voices and soft laughter.

Barely a step off the landing and Edward’s descending on him, fork in hand. “Open,” he orders, and Alexander dutifully accepts the bite of chicken and rice that tastes shockingly similar to the fare they used to get back home. “Not bad, right?” A lurch of homesickness hits him so fast he can barely process, and then Edward is backing away in alarm. “Don’t cry, oh my God, I’m sorry.”

“I’m not crying over curry rice,” he says, but doesn’t miss Lafayette nonchalantly sliding a plastic container back onto the counter by Hester’s elbow. “I’m being kidnapped now – ”

“We’re going on retreat,” Lafayette corrects cheerfully.

“ – so if I’m not back in three days, go ahead and sell my things.”

Hester looks a little taken aback at that but Edward just rolls his eyes and corners him once Lafayette’s slipped out the front door. “You know you don’t have to go anywhere.”

“It’s fine,” he sighs, lets himself be wrapped up in a suffocating embrace, and then reconsiders the wisdom of those words when he steps out the door and sees the car on the curb. “Laf, what the hell?”

Lafayette relieves him of the computer bag slung over his shoulder and hands it back to Edward. “No work on retreat.” Neither of them mention the awkward limbo of his work situation right now anyway, and he lets the laptop disappear back into the townhouse without comment.

Which still leaves him the dilemma of the car. Sleek black, tinted windows, Secret Service agent standing beside the open back door, waiting on them with professional patience behind a dark pair of sunglasses. Lafayette doesn’t make it a habit to be chauffeured around by armed guards during his off hours, which means there’s only one place _away from the city_ they could be heading. “Are you serious?”

Lafayette huffs softly and nudges him towards the car. “The last time you dumped stunning revelations in his lap and then disappeared, his guilt chased you all the way to the Caribbean.” His cheeks heat up at that not-quite-admonishment. “But now he’s the president, which means _you_ can go to _him_.”

Alexander stumbles another step and then realizes, “I’m really not dressed for this.”

“Oh, for the love of – _get in the car_.” He scrambles in and slides over to make room for Lafayette to slide in beside him with a great deal more grace. “It’ll do you both some good, I think,” he continues as the agent throws Alexander’s bag in the back, “to start seeing one another as human beings with all your component parts and flaws. Away from the trappings of his office. Off of the inherent pedestal with which it comes.”

“He’s the president; I’m a junior staffer who works in the basement. Aren’t I _supposed_ to see him on something of a -”

“You aren’t _just_ a junior staffer,” Lafayette corrects quietly. Eyes fixed unseeingly out the window as they turn out onto the main road. “And therein lies the _true_ problem of this entire past week, non?” He swallows thickly and stares down at his hands in his lap. “And it’s not because of Conway. It’s not even that you were comparatively underqualified for your job; there’ve certainly been no complaints about your work, save a couple of congressional malcontents.”

“But I never should have been here in the first place,” Alexander finishes for him.

Lafayette turns to look at him; Alexander keeps his eyes determinedly down. “If it helps you understand… George’s success, both in politics and the military, comes largely from a constant effort to identify and surround himself with people who possess knowledge and talent in the areas he lacks. And he will pursue that talent. Tilghman was a page, once upon a time.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Hm. George sought him for an internship a few years later, and they’ve been inseparable since. Our connection, while more meandering in the years between, began in a not wholly dissimilar way in a markedly different environment. Thomas snatched Madison out from under him, and George made sure to repay the favor when I left the diplomatic corps shortly thereafter, and I think our dear friend _Publius_ perhaps underestimates George’s grasp of Jefferson’s cunning and ambition.”

Alexander finally glances sidelong at him, bottom lip caught between his teeth.

“I will make one thing inescapably clear, moving forward.” Lafayette holds his eyes and says quietly, “I compared the date of your last post with the date you signed your employment contract, and had there been so much as a day’s overlap, we would not be sitting here right now. You would already be stripped of your access and clearances, and had your computer confiscated.” And quieter still, “I wonder if, in your effort to spare the president from unjust accusations – yes, I know about Legget’s original story – it never occurred that the president hiring a blogger of such acclaim – whose blog he once quoted and helped elevate, I might add, whose blog was credited with a not-insignificant effect on political activities during its three-year life – would raise far more dubious ethical questions than hiring a page who, seven years ago, had sex with one of his colleagues.”

“No,” he whispers, and the only positive thing about the new burst of guilt lodging in his chest is that it at least momentarily drives away his guilt about John.

“I thought not,” Lafayette concedes. “But that does rather make my point, though.”

“I know,” he sighs. “Okay? I know I should have said something, but -”

“I’m not actually talking about you,” Lafayette cuts him off. “No, the blame for landing you in the position in which you found yourself this week lies principally at George’s feet.”

Alexander stares. Frowns and shakes his head. “He didn’t _know_. You realize that, right?”

“No,” Lafayette agrees. “But what he _did_ do was place you in the position of making a sound judgment about working for him, however indirectly, after you had already made your discomfort with your continued connection known in both words and actions.” And it takes him a minute to even understand what Lafayette means. His brief panic after he first crossed paths with Paine at Columbia; his frustration with the president, with _himself_ , for the letter that got him there in the first place. A brief text exchange and then the long silence, only broken some sixteen months later when –

And there’s a puzzle solved. He huffs out a soft laugh. “Is that why Addy’s mad at you? Because you didn’t tell her _not_ to put me in the wedding?”

“More or less. She would have still wanted you there,” he clarifies after a moment. “Do not mistake my meaning. But she feels… instrumental in setting you on a course that would inevitably end in this week’s grief, so.”

“It’s not like I set up shop with the NEC that week, c’mon.”

“No,” Lafayette muses thoughtfully. “You prevaricated. And dropped off the grid once more. And resurfaced a year later, up to your eyeballs in an investigation of congressional corruption, and you told the president you were not _done_ in New York.” He nods slowly. “The job with Wolcott had nothing to do with it. You wanted to see _Publius_ through the election first.”

“…yeah.”

The look in Lafayette’s eyes is too close to pitying, and Alexander turns to direct his attention out the car window as they head south along the Potomac Parkway. “I do not doubt,” Lafayette continues, and he sounds like he is choosing his words carefully, “that John and Edward ending up here, together, might have lured you eventually. But having, I hope, a decent sense of you, your particular brand of ambition that is so very rooted and sometimes even undercut by _pride_ – I have to wonder if you could possibly fathom ending up in the White House, had George not suggested it first.”

 

x---x

It’s a forty minute drive to the first family’s private residence in northern Virginia, further south on the Potomac. When their conversation tapers off, Lafayette returns to some business on his phone and Alexander watches the compact chaos of the beltway fade away into sprawling subdivisions, parks and marinas on the river. The houses grow slowly bigger and further apart, no longer separated into neighborhoods marked by granite signs with scrawling script but huge mansions set back in the trees, turnoffs that lead to gates with intercoms and security cameras.

They cross over a bridge – Alexander spies a sign marking _Little Hunting Creek_ – and then turn off maybe half a mile later on a drive that would be unremarkable were it not for the Secret Service checkpoint around the first curve. They get waved through without fanfare, and _then_ there’s a gate where the driver inputs a security code, and then the house beyond with the security a little more muted at first glance. An effort to create the illusion of normalcy, he suspects.

It’s large in that old country farmhouse way, wraparound porch and brick chimneys rising up either side of the roof. A balcony off either end of the second story, and he can envision the antiquated practicality of the design for air flow in a time when air conditioning did not exist to alleviate the heavy Virginia summers, rendered all the more muggy so close to the water here.

Lafayette snags his bag out of the trunk and then leads the way up the steps to the porch and into the house without so much as a warning knock, where he toes off his shoes in the foyer and drops Alexander’s things just inside the door. “I’m afraid I must – ah,” Lafayette turns as the soft pad of feet precede the appearance of Martha Washington from the hallway by the stairs. “You two are surely acquainted by now, bon? Bon.”

Only in that vague sort of _introduced at holiday gatherings_ way, and there’s no reason to expect the first lady to _remember_ him amidst a sea of anonymous staffer faces. But she just smiles and waves Lafayette on. “Go, go, before his temper gets the better of him and he undoes all of Randolph’s hard work.” She turns to Alexander as Lafayette starts up the stairs. “It’s nearly noon – have you eaten, dear?”

“Oh,” he blinks. “I’m f-”

“No,” Lafayette hollers down, “he hasn’t.” And then with a creak and quick slamming of a door, he’s gone.

“Well,” Alexander stares up after him. “Alright then.”

“One year,” Martha murmurs as she turns to lead the way deeper into the house, “nine months, and one day.”

He follows dutifully, feeling equal parts awkward and absurd. “Ma’am?”

“Until George hands the reins of the country over to somebody else.”

“Ah.” They turn a corner and end up in an open kitchen that’s meticulously tidy, save a half-full mug of tea on a center island next to a covered cake plate laden with scones. “So, um. I’m Alexander.”

A delighted smile breaks over her face and sharp eyes size him up before gesturing him into a stool. “I know who you are.”

“…right.”

“You’ve been a semi-regular name in this house since George read me your essay.” His brows furrow in confusion and she clarifies. “ _The forgotten and disenfranchised of a modern American colony._ ” An embarrassed flush spreads across his face, and she laughs lightly, watching him from across the island. “He’d not have believed they were the thoughts of a fifteen-year-old, had the accompanying recommendations not vouched for your… way with words.” His face is most assuredly beet-red. “And then a year later, he informed me that he must take a quick trip to the Virgin Islands and _no_ , apologies, he would not be taking me along for a much-needed vacation.”

He’s really not sure what he’s supposed to say to that. “Did he ever make it up to you?”

Her smile widens. “One long, lovely week with no distractions in the two months between the election and inauguration. We went to Barbados.” And then she prompts him again, “Hungry?”

His eyes slide back to the scones. “Are these Addy’s?” Martha nods, and he slowly reaches over and removes the cover. Plucks one up and offers it over, and then takes another for himself. Halting and unsure, wrong-footed by the utter lack of any ceremony to this casual moment.

“Butter? Jam?” He freezes midway through chewing his first bite. “Both, then. Maybe honey.”

Which is how they end up on the back deck a few minutes later, the whole plate of scones between them, a freshly-brewed cup of coffee for Alexander and tea for Martha, alternating spreads and deciding favorites while overlooking the vast expanse of the property between the house and the river, barely visible in the distance.

“You do know you can leave at any time, I hope.”

He swallows with effort and forces a lopsided grin. “I assumed Laf wasn’t _actually_ kidnapping me.”

“I’ll let you in on a further secret,” Martha adds, eyes narrowed shrewdly. “You _don’t_ have to speak with George. If you do not want to. Even if you stay. I flatter myself to imagine that springtime in the countryside can be healing in its own way.”

“Is that why I’m here? _Healing_?”

She shrugs. A bit coy. “I think you’re here because your young man and Addy have declared a weekend free of White House politics while they bake away their troubles and then chase the twins around the zoo to feel less guilty about all the sugar. Anything you might gain beyond that is a bonus.” And more seriously, she adds, “For all his bluster, Gil does care, very deeply. And whatever path you should take, moving forward – I believe it is his dear hope that some stronger resolution might be reached between you, if this _is_ to be where you and George part ways. Lest you continue to… circle through the same miscommunications and mistakes in perpetuity.”

Which perhaps doesn’t offer a lot of clarity to his thoughts or help him decide what to do from here, but Martha Custis Washington is kind and unassuming and he figures there are worse things than whiling away the afternoon under the gently doting hospitality of the first lady.

 

Lafayette and the president end up spending the better part of the day locked away in the study upstairs. Alexander isn’t quite clear on what the sudden crisis is, beyond that it seems to be the first true test of the new Secretary of State who he knows is somewhere in Europe.

Martha takes him around the house, and then around the property. Down a trail through the trees to the river, and back up a winding path through the pasture, and when they reach an empty stable, curiosity finally drives him to ask. “Can I be nosy?”

“I think that’s only fair, given present circumstances.” But then before he can voice the thought, she guesses, “Why do we have empty stables and fields we don’t farm?”

He glances in surprise at the fence beyond the pasture, the dormant field beyond; had assumed that was the property line. “More or less.”

“The property passed through my first husband’s family. They were the farmers. After he passed – and until George decided to run, and a certain practicality had to be considered – I rented out the fields. And after Patsy passed, we rehomed the last couple horses.”

“Did she ride?”

Martha nods, gaze lingering on the stable like she’s peering back into some happier time past. “She did. It made me nervous, but George was wrapped around her finger from the first they met, and he helped her plead her case.”

Hoping it’s the right thing for the moment, he tells her, “John still talks about her sometimes. He admired her a great deal.”

“She liked him. One way at first, I think,” Martha grins, “and then perhaps another, but always steadfast.” They turn and head back up towards the house; Martha throws a casual wave at an agent heading into a barn by the drive that must have been converted to a Secret Service staging ground for the property and the family’s protection. “She also once said he was the sweetest troublemaker amongst the children of the leadership; and that if he could survive the latter years with Henry, he was made of stronger stuff than she. Of course,” she continues when he can’t quite decide an appropriate response to _that_ , “rumor has it that Henry has made significant progress towards dislodging his head from his rear end in recent years.”

They mount the steps back up to the deck. “I think so,” he calls up behind her. “He and John get on well these days. I’m a more distrusting sort but we’re… getting there.” _Before yesterday, anyway_.

When she reaches the landing, she stops and turns, making him draw up short on the top step. She looks him in the eye like that, long enough that he starts to feel discomfited, and then muses, “And no stranger to grief either, are you?”

He blinks. A beat passes, and he tells her, “It’s been a long time.”

She cups his cheek, a quick, fleeting touch, and then turns and leads the way back through the door into the kitchen.

 

There’s a writing desk in the guest room where she put his bag. He plugs in his phone and broods and stares at the messages and calls he’s missed since the afternoon prior, and finds not one of them from John. There is a picture from Adrienne though that feels like something of an olive branch, John with a wide-eyed Anastasie in his arms, staring into the panda enclosure. There’s also a text from Edward.

_From: Neddy_

_Dad sends his love. I did not tell him that you’ve been abducted by the WH chief of staff, lest he panic. Hope you’re still alive, cheers._

He sighs and puts the phone down, and then props his elbows on the desk and rubs wearily at his temples. A tap at the partially-open door draws his gaze up, and then he bangs his knees on the underside of the desk in his rush to get up.

“Alexander,” Washington sighs, and the mortified flush is back with a fervor. “Do you imagine guests rise to their feet every time I walk in and out of the room in my own home?”

A small (embarrassed) part of him hates Lafayette in that moment, but he quirks a half-smile. “I don’t know, sir; how much do you like your in-laws?” Washington chuckles, gaze wandering around the tidy space, untouched save for Alexander’s still-packed bag sitting on the chest at the foot of the bed, the phone charging on the desk. “Have you reached a lull in your diplomatic crisis?”

“Hm. If only because it’s bedtime in Luxembourg.” His fingers twitch for his phone, but he resists the urge to start digging around to figure out what’s going on. “I trust you passed a pleasant enough afternoon with Martha?”

He doesn’t apologize for the unforeseen draw on his time, and Alexander… appreciates that. In a way he can’t quite explain even to himself.

“I did. It felt a bit like having a mother again.” And then his brain catches up to his mouth and he wipes his hands down his face. “That was probably wildly inappropriate, I’m sorry, sir.”

“I think the sentiment would make her cry in the best possible way.” Alexander just shakes his head and wants to disappear. After a protracted silence, Washington prompts gently, “She and Gil are downstairs arguing about dinner.” Pause. “If you’re staying.”

He doesn’t know what he’s doing, and he doesn’t know what he wants. But he forces a steadying breath and removes his hands from his face and nods. “I’ll be down shortly, sir.”

 

x---x

In the end, he stays.

They eat dinner outside on the deck and split a bottle of wine between them. Martha and Lafayette bicker like _they_ ’re the married couple, and as dusk settles around them, Washington retrieves a blanket from inside and drapes it around his wife’s shoulders without a word spoken. Between their long marriage and his even longer friendship with Lafayette, it’s hard not to feel _some_ measure of intrusiveness as he mostly sits back with a smile and watches and listens. But they let him be as engaged – or not – as he likes as they flit from topic to topic, as Lafayette periodically responds to a pressing message or passes one on to the president and later disappears inside so he can exchange _good night_ s with Adrienne and the girls.

His mind keeps flitting back to a calm morning in Christiansted upended by walking in the door and finding Washington there waiting for him. The senator unflinchingly weathering his bitter anger while they spoke for the first time since he’d been sat down in the man’s office and expelled. As the night winds on, he fidgets under the expectation of another such scene, some unspoken agreement in which Martha and Lafayette leave him and Washington to hash out the events of the day prior, but it never comes.

Indeed, Washington turns in first for the night; Alexander can only imagine the early mornings and unpredictability of sleep for a man who is always on call to make important decisions at all hours of the day, a man who is more than six years into an excruciatingly demanding job and getting no younger.

Lafayette surrenders and heads upstairs soon thereafter, at which point Martha insists on plying Alexander with a mug of hot chocolate to cap off their evening. “I’m still not entirely sure why I’m here,” he confesses as she tops off their drinks with an overabundance of marshmallows.

She glances up at him, expression shrewd with a hint of exasperation. “What did Gil tell you?”

“That the last time I made a mess of things, the president chased me back home, so this time I would have to go to him.”

She holds his gaze and raises a single, expectant brow.

“Oh,” he says dumbly when he finally gets it.

 

x---x

The house is quiet when Alexander’s internal alarm insists on waking him at six thirty the next morning, but he spies light under the study door where Washington and Lafayette holed themselves up to deal with their vague international crisis. After using the bathroom, splashing some water on his face, he pads down the stairs and hovers awkwardly in the kitchen.

Assurances from the first lady or not, there’s something distinctly weird about rummaging around in the president’s cabinets for coffee.

While it brews, he gnaws on one of the remaining scones and tries to collect his thoughts. An hour and two cups of coffee later, they’re not all that organized, but the clip of quick feet down the stairs pulls him out of his head.

Lafayette comes around the corner and makes a beeline for the coffee pot. “You are a saint, my friend,” he mutters, digging around for a travel mug.

Alexander eyes him, dressed for the day, shoes and all. “Are you leaving?”

“I’ll be back.” He screws on a lid and immediately takes a careful sip. “Collecting the girls.”

“How many?”

Lafayette grins as he snags his wallet off the counter by the back door. “Just the two; Addy is claiming her own day off.” He searches around for a minute and eventually locates his keys in his own pocket, sighs, and heads back towards the hallway.

And then he stops and looks Alexander over where he’s perched on the island stool. “You’ve slept, I hope.”

“Yeah.” He frowns. “Do I look like I haven’t?”

“Just making sure.”

Alexander chews on his lip and twists his hands in the sleeves of his sweatshirt. “Is he…?”

Lafayette pauses again in the doorway and glances back at him, surprise and curiosity flitting behind his eyes. “He’s reading. You can interrupt.”

And then he’s gone.

Alexander gives it another ten minutes of indecisive fretting before dragging himself back to the stairs. On the one hand, every instinct screams at him _not_ to interrupt the president during a rare peaceful moment. On the other, he _does_ understand why they’re doing this _here_ instead of at the Residence, and so he shoves down every urge to wait for Washington to emerge first, to at least change out of his sweatshirt and flannel pajama pants, and he taps softly on the study door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to throw this out there *just in case* but bear with me if 17 and 18 come along a little later than planned. Sick kiddo, with the husband-person about to be out of town for work, because that's how this shit inevitably rolls. 
> 
> Hopefully there shan't be a delay, but I'll probably wait to post 17 until I finally finish 18.
> 
> Urf.


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Alexander has productive conversation with Washington; albeit, perhaps not the productive conversation Washington was expecting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am pleased to report that I finally finished the final chapter late last night at the very end of the unexpected hell-month that was September. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy:

“Come in,” Washington calls absently. He pushes open the door, and the first glimpse of the leader of the free world in lounge pants and a threadbare Army sweatshirt eliminates all self-consciousness about his own attire. “Ah – good morning, Alexander.”

“Can I have a word, sir?”

Washington peers at him intently overtop a pair of reading glasses before nodding and closing the briefing book in his lap. “Certainly.” He gestures Alexander into the empty armchair, angled in to mirror his own where he sits in front of the cold fireplace. “How was your -?”

“I think Lafayette is too hard on you,” Alexander blurts. And barrels on ahead before the embarrassment can win out. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want to be here. Just because you started the conversation, doesn’t mean – I waited, you know? I did it on my own terms, and it’s been an incredible honor, sir.”

Washington mulls that while Alexander settles himself in the seat and flits his gaze around the room, part curious, part nervous. “I think,” he starts slowly, folding up his glasses and resting them atop the portfolio, “that your sentiments have nevertheless not altogether changed since your time at Columbia.” And Alexander _wants_ to deny it; he dearly does. “What’s more, I can’t help but wonder if the particular _manner_ of your reveal on Friday wasn’t intended to… make a point?” He frowns and shakes his head, not understanding. “An assertion of independence, perhaps?”

“No,” he says. “Or… at least not in the way you’re thinking.” He twists his hands in his sleeves and asks, “Did Laf tell you about Legget’s story?” Washington nods slowly. “Did he find out who Legget’s source was for it?”

The president cocks a curious brow. “Did _you_?”

“I guessed; he said I was right. It was Congressman Eacker.” It takes Washington a minute to even place the relevance of the name, just one among hundreds of legislators on the Hill. Recognition sparks in his eyes, but the confusion remains. “He worked for Senator Yates at the same time as - ”

“John André,” Washington finishes for him with a sigh. “Of course.”

“I think he knew exactly what he was doing during the hearing. In drawing attention to my age and inexperience.”

A faint smile touches Washington’s lips. “But you came ready for him, and he overplayed his hand.”

“But he laid the kindling and waited for a spark to catch; and then he shopped out a story that…” He stops talking when Washington actually _laughs_ , a low chuckle as he turns to stare absently in the direction of the fireplace. Thinking. “Sir?”

“Apologies, my boy.” He shakes his head. “It’s just – one of the _many_ unpleasant meetings to follow your departure from the program involved John André informing me of _precisely_ the manner in which the story could be twisted to my greatest detriment.”

“Even then, he wanted you to bury it?”

“Hm; he seemed quite peeved, that Thomas was unwilling to play that game.” Alexander bites his tongue – he has no intention of spouting wild accusations with no ability to prove them and, by now, Publius has said enough on the matter. “I hope you did not go through all that trouble simply to protect me from the likes of John André.”

“If that was all I wanted,” he neatly sidesteps the question and stares at the floor, “I’d have just sent the file to Olivia and been done with it.”

Washington watches him as silence stretches on between them. A clock downstairs chimes eight o’clock, and he finally hears the faint footsteps of the first lady roaming about, but she doesn’t interrupt them and he has a sneaking suspicion that Lafayette sent her a message warning her not to.

“Gil said something to me when we left Saint Croix, all those years ago,” Washington eventually muses. Tone gentle and cautious, which heightens Alexander’s wariness exponentially. “The _first_ time he accused me of allowing emotion to cloud my better judgement in the matter.” His cheeks go pink and he shifts his gaze to where his hands are tucked under his knees. “He speculated that your fear – your anger – was rooted in a fear of powerlessness. Given how… tumultuous your teenage years had been long before you arrived in D.C.”

He is very careful not to outwardly react to that.

“And I can’t help but wonder – presuming some logic to his theory – after Arnold and André tried to rewrite events to their own ends; after discovering that Conway had lied to you for weeks about what you understood to be a mutually-protected secret; indeed, after watching myself, Thomas, James rehash those events in carefully edited form over the next several months…”

“Yeah,” he exhales all in a rush. “Yeah.”

“Faced with the story Eacker sold Legget, you wanted to finally speak for yourself; tell _your_ story,” Washington concludes at last. “And found yourself with a readily available voice – an unimpeachable voice – with which to do so.” He shrugs and nods, and feels his cheeks darken with even that fleeting compliment. “At the risk of prying, I think that is not the _whole_ story.”

“Sir?”

“We spoke a week ago, you and I, and Gil. We discussed… the possibility that a reporter would dig in _just_ the right place; the possibility that a number of questions would be raised that could look dubious, at first glance, for the administration, the old investigation.” Alexander fidgets and glances awkwardly away, unable to meet the president’s discerning stare. “You seemed… resigned to those possibilities. I have, since Friday afternoon, discovered that you conferred with Ebony on Monday morning about letting the Communications team handle the press, and then met with Hugh with the explicit purpose of preparing him for the potential story that could arise from the vice president’s provocations.”

He sighs and runs his hands through his hair.

“Did something _else_ – something besides discovering the original story the _Evening Post_ intended to run – happen between your conversation with Hugh and your confrontation with Will Legget?”

The president does have an unfortunate, albeit oblivious, tendency to dig at this particular wound. He doesn’t know how to answer that question in anything besides an absolute – stonewalling him altogether, or spilling the whole sordid tale about his fucked up family.

He pulls his bare feet up onto the chair and rests his forehead on his knees. Sucks in a couple of deep breaths like that, unsure where to go from this moment here, both in this conversation, in his whole damn _life_ , and –

“Alexander?” A prompt born of worry more than impatience, he thinks. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to – ”

“I called Conway,” he admits, muffled, hunched over in the chair. “I wanted… _fuck_ , I don’t know what I wanted, I just…”

Far more wary, Washington probes in the ensuing silence as he trails off, “Did he say something that made you – ?”

“No.” He unfolds enough to wipe angrily at his hot eyes, willing the tears back. “No, this wasn’t until Friday morning.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

In all fairness, nor does he. “Maybe it just wasn’t enough for him to hear it from Publius; maybe I needed him to hear it from _me_.”

“To hear what?”

He twitches and shakes his head; slowly uncurls on the chair and rests his head against the tall padded back. “I just… I’m done running from it. Done letting shame hold that secret over me, my life. I don’t know. It’s like… maybe it never mattered, how long removed; how hard I pushed myself, how far I ran. To finally just _acknowledge_ that…”

It occurs in the blink of an eye, and he startles upright, blinks into the dim light of the study. “Alexander?”

“I…” He looks at Washington again, finally. All earnest compassion, mild curiosity, a deep weariness in the set of his eyes, the lines of his face, and he realizes, “…have to go.”

“Oh.” Dismay washes across his features before he can quite school his expression. “I am very sorry, if I -”

“No, sir, it’s not – I just realized that I need to be somewhere else right now.”

Washington takes the abrupt turnabout with relative grace. “I will let them know downstairs, then."

Right; he’s miles from the nearest metro train or bus. “Thank you, sir.” He rises and backs towards the door. “I’m sorry, this is – I appreciate what you -”

“I wonder if I might ask a favor?” Washington interrupts his flustered rambling, and he snaps his mouth shut. “Take a week or two. Let the dust settle; go…wherever it is you need to be.” And there’s no small amount of curiosity sparking behind his eyes at that. “Before making any final decisions about work.”

He opens his mouth and then realizes he doesn’t quite know what to say; indecisive, mind suddenly somewhere else entirely, and for once not thinking about the larger picture of his career, his life moving ahead from this moment.

“Unless you’re already quite determined,” Washington hedges when his inability to find an adequate reply becomes all too apparent. “But given assurances that Publius is to resume his long-dormant state, I don’t think anything that happened on Friday will be a deal-breaker with the OGE.”

“Alright, sir,” he agrees quietly. “I will… be in touch.”

It’s a matter of moments to have his things together, and he’s halfway down the stairs before he realizes that it’ll surely be at least a few minutes before a car is ready for him. Which turns into about twenty, while Martha insists on feeding him some eggs despite his insistence that the earlier scone was sufficient.

Like having a mother again, indeed.

 

x---x

There’s no one home when the car drops him off an hour later. He’s guiltily grateful for this – John’s presence would leave him torn between staying and trying to find some small measure of reconciliation before dashing back off, and he spent the ride back from Virginia booking flights and a hotel and he’s not got much time to spare; Edward would try to talk him out of the trip altogether, or at least to postpone it until the end of term when he could take some time and come too.

So he swaps out his bag for a bigger one and throws a handful of changes of clothes into it with his toothbrush, his phone charger. He stares at his laptop bag that Edward must have tossed on the bed after he left with Lafayette and wavers for a minute before deciding to just move it to the desk and leave it behind.

Once he’s satisfied with his admittedly minimal preparation, he digs a sheet of paper out of the desk and scribbles a quick note. Which he then balls up, restarts on a fresh sheet, and then scratches out three more attempts before sketching a very vague:

_Gotta go take care of something(s) – back in a week. I love you (both of you, don’t make that face, Neddy). –A._

He deposits the note on the counter, shoulders his bag, double-checks his wallet and his SmarTrip card, and heads to the metro.

 

In the airport, he’s dragged most reluctantly back to the time he stepped off a plane in Saint Croix to discover Thomas Conway’s face blasted on the news on the mounted television screens; except this time, he gets a passing glimpse of his _own_ face and that’s decidedly weirder, but at least two days out, it seems to be a relatively short segment before it moves on to a salmonella outbreak in Connecticut.

He supposes he ought to be flattered that his own misdeeds rank higher on the media list of priorities than foodborne illness a couple hundred miles away.

While sitting outside the gate, he fields a couple of queries from Lafayette, clearly returned with Anastasie and Virginie to find him gone. But of course, it’s the worst – or best – timing when Edward gets home, and he’s already boarded the plane, sitting in an aisle seat in an otherwise empty row and ready to hop up at any moment to allow someone through when his phone vibrates in his pocket.

_From: Neddy_

_Alex what the fuck._

_To: Neddy_

_I’m okay. Promise._

He means it, even as anticipation has his leg bouncing with nervous energy, as he scrambles aside and allows a dad with a boy who looks to be maybe three to join him in the row, the mother with an even younger child in the row in front. He gets an apologetic look from dad, but aside from a brief fit wherein the little boy shrieks about wanting to sit with mom instead, it’s an uneventful flight.

When they land, it takes a couple minutes for his phone to power back on and catch up to what it’s missed; he finds only one further text from Edward, and he cringes inwardly.

_From: Neddy_

_Okay well, John’s pretty pissed._

He doesn’t respond.

One interpersonal crisis at a time, and he cannot afford distractions.

 

x---x

He takes a shuttle to the hotel, drops his things off, and then a cab to an address he reads off his phone. Hotels and restaurants that dominate the landscape within a certain radius of the airport give way quickly enough to sprawling subdivisions but, unlike the trek out into Virginia the day before, the cab veers off into the heart of one such cluster.

There’s something familiar, if one could ignore the surrounding metropolitan sprawl for miles and miles in any direction, to the single-story concrete block houses, the palm trees that decorate most front yards as they pass several blocks. Something that reminds him of growing up in Christiansted, something wholly unrelatable to the past six years of his life, the looming towers of Manhattan, the posh townhomes of their D.C. neighborhood, all brick and concrete in contrast to the green that’s everywhere in this muggy south Florida climate.

The house where the taxi pulls up is as unremarkable as any of the others passed en route. A half-heartedly trimmed hedge in front, a tricycle tucked at the back of an empty carport. Two lawn chairs on a tiny, covered porch and a simple wooden cross on the slate gray wall beside the door.

“Need me to wait?” the driver asks him as he counts out a small fortune for the twenty minute ride and tip.

In case it’s a short stop, or in case no one is home at all, Alexander supposes. Both seem like distinct possibilities, but he just says, “I’m alright, thanks,” and climbs out of the car.

The street is still as he cuts up the short driveway, but he can hear the shrieks of children in nearby backyards, smell dinner on a grill. Part of him misses the days of near-constant summer growing up, instead of New York’s bitter winters, the way that March and April in D.C. can bounce between winter and summer with nary a spring in between.

Sizing up the chair on the porch in anticipation of a likely wait, he rings the doorbell and startles to hear the near-instant patter of running feet, and the surprise freezes him in place, speechless, when the heavy door swings open with a quiet grunt of effort and a familiar little face peers at him through the storm door, tip of her nose pressed against the screen.

“Hi,” she says, blunt.

“Well,” he finds his voice. “Hello, then.”

She stares at him, little brow furrowed, clearly unimpressed at the unfamiliarity of their surprise visitor, until a voice that makes Alexander’s heart skip a beat calls from the back of the house, “Who is it?”

“I don’t know,” she hollers back, very matter-of-fact, and he huffs out a soft laugh despite himself.

Heavy footsteps approach, and there’s the briefest moment where he regrets everything and wants to just _go_. “That’s rude, Raque, why don’t you – ?”

The voice cuts off all at once, and Alexander drags his eyes up to look at his brother’s face for the first time in nearly eleven years. 

“Well,” he repeats, quieter now, “hello, then.”

A taut silence falls, heavy with the impossible weight of the years lost between them, broken only by the distant laughter, a barking dog in a house across the street.

And then Raquel breaks it when it finally occurs to demand, “Who are you?”

James closes his eyes and wipes at his face. “Why don’t you go finish your show.”

“No.”

Alexander can’t help but laugh again. James sighs. “You’ll miss the part with the -”

“I froze it.”

“You _paused_ – whatever.” He visibly casts about, completely off-guard, while Raquel’s gaze darts between the two men, excited with the new tension she can sense but hardly understand. “Want to watch videos on my phone?”

“Yes!”

There’s a brief negotiation while he pulls something up for her. Alexander drifts back from the door and waits, arms crossed, staring broodingly out over the yard, the street and wondering if Lafayette and Adrienne can even begin to fathom what their future holds with the girls.

Eventually, the screen door opens and closes, and when he glances back, he sees that James has pulled the front door mostly closed too. “She’s hilarious.”

“She’s _you_ ,” his brother retorts, and then his mouth presses in a thin line and mirrors his posture, arms crossed defensively and his chin tucked to his chest. “Why didn’t you call?”

He just spreads one hand, gives a little half-hearted shrug. “I make dumb, impulsive decisions,” he offers, and then: “Thought maybe I’d know what to say by the time I got here.”

He lets the ensuing silence confirm the fact that no, he still really doesn’t have any idea how to bridge this chasm; _if_ there’s any bridging it.

“Lu’s at work,” James mumbles to the ground when the quiet threatens to drag on. “If you wanted -”

“Just.” He exhales heavily through his nose and forces his thoughts into something tangible, something he can put to words. “My life is really complicated.”

“I, uh.” James coughs and scuffs at the concrete porch with the toe of his shoe. “Yeah, I was getting that.”

“You didn’t so much as say goodbye when a police officer put me in her car and took me off to spend a year bouncing between strangers, could you have the _fucking decency_ of looking me in the eye now, for Christ’s sake?” James flinches, and runs a hand over his face. Forces his gaze up to meet Alexander’s and his eyes are wide and red, fearful. “My life is complicated,” he repeats quietly. “But it is fundamentally, beyond reasonable expectations, _good_. I work for a good man, who believed in me when I was just a messed-up kid. Who gave me a chance most wouldn’t have dared, and then _another one_ when I… pulled what I pulled on Friday. And assuming that fiasco and _this_ impulsive little joyride don’t ultimately undo it all, I have… a boyfriend who is a better man than I could ever hope to be. Who I… look at and think _rest of our lives_ kind of thoughts.

“And I can’t… for all the complication, I have to take the bad with the good. To accept the equal parts they took in shaping who I am today, what I _have_ today – and what I have is something worth protecting.”

“And you think I threaten that,” James surmises, voice barely above a whisper.

He just throws up his hands. Frustrated, irritated – wanting answers face-to-face that eluded him from a distance and coming up empty. “I’ve spent more than two years trying to figure that out. And I just _don’t know._ ”

A longer silence lingers. A frayed connection, barely clinging by the weakest of threads, and he can read the fear in James’s face, certain that one wrong move will sever it irrevocably.

So they stand there and watch each other, wary, until Alexander takes pity on the stranger standing before him, or perhaps more so on the lost, angry teenager he once was, the depressed and detached boy who Alexander last knew, and he murmurs quietly, “But in the meantime, you could invite me inside. I’d like to meet my niece.”

 

 

He only stays in Florida two nights. Often as he ignores them, he knows his limits.

Given his late and unannounced arrival, he doesn’t even stay all that long the first night. Plays with Raquel, whose attitude towards his presence shifts seismically when she realizes who the stranger on her doorstep was, and listens indulgently while she explains the show she’s watching in intricate detail.

James hovers, watching them with an unreadable expression playing across his face until he eventually excuses himself, phone in hand, with a quickly mumbled, “Lu’s off soon, I’m gonna…”

His absence stretches on far longer than Alexander imagines the phone call itself did, but he’s a little more composed upon his return; enough at least to offer something to drink, which leads to fielding Raquel’s demands for _apple juice_ _in the shark cup with exactly two ice cubes_ , but eventually he gets a glass of water that at least gives him something to do with his hands while he’s avoiding his brother’s searching stare.

When Lucia comes in a half hour later, she stops only long enough to pull him into a tight embrace, and then flits about like there’s nothing out of the ordinary. She doffs a set of nurse’s scrubs that carry that all-too-familiar antiseptic hospital smell, heats up some leftovers, and doesn’t push it when he declines her offer to find him something to eat as well.

He lets Raquel monopolize his attention, and James and Lucia give them their space while Lucia averts the potential for awkward silence with a few quiet stories about her long shift.

At eight, Lucia gives Raquel a warning about her impending bedtime. Already fidgety, Alexander starts to rise to go and call another cab.

“I can drive you,” James offers, and then hesitates when Lucia shoots him a look. “Or…”

“Yeah,” Alexander says, surprising even himself. “Okay.”

Raquel climbs into his lap and wraps her arms around his neck and tells him very earnestly, “Come back and play again. I have a sandbox.”

“Oh, neat.”

“It looks like a _turtle_.”

He kisses the tip of her nose. “I’ll come back tomorrow. If your parents say it’s okay.”

She ignores the caveat. “Mama takes me to school _really early_ and then Abuelo picks me up and we eat lunch and then daddy comes home from work and -”

“Bueno, cariña,” Lucia strokes her long hair absently before plucking her up to free Alexander, “we’ll figure it out.”

They’re in the car a few minutes later. Navigating twenty minutes of an enclosed space with his brother seems treacherous enough territory as it is, but he can’t help the halting question. “So, uh… Abuelo? That’s not…”

“ _Jesus_ , no. Lu’s dad.”

“You went looking though, right?” James shoots him a sharp look as they stop at the next block, winding their way back out of the neighborhood. “I mean – I know you didn’t stay on Saint Croix, where else would you have gone?”

He doesn’t answer for a couple of minutes. Nerves, or guilt, or just plain bad memories, but Alexander doesn’t back down from the question; figures his brother owes him this much. “I had some money saved up,” he confesses at last as they turn out onto the main road that’ll dump them back onto the freeway. “After mom… I don’t know if you’d remember, but I got into UVI. Never followed through, never sent the deposit, but I went to Saint Thomas, crashed for a few weeks with some friends. They started classes, I lined up a job, found a cheap room… they made noise about getting me admitted for the spring in light of the extenuating circumstances, and I… found new friends with lower expectations.”

“Drank your way through college without any of the actual academic element?”

James barks out a harsh laugh. “Among other things. I remember far too little of the months I spent there.” He pauses to check his mirrors, merge onto the interstate traffic. Alexander stares absently at the dashboard all the while. “The next summer, I left for San Juan. And… didn’t look back until – well.”

Until whatever conversation or revelation or crisis of conscience sent him to Mister Stevens’s doorstep three years ago. “You ever find dad?”

“Do you really want to know?”

He bites his lip and glances sidelong at his brother’s troubled face and honestly mulls the question for a minute before deciding… “No, I guess not. Not today, anyway.”

James’s eyes dart quickly over to him; at the implication that this might, indeed, be the start of something rather than the end.

And then he surprises Alexander by jumping straight into the tangled mess that, in whatever roundabout way, brought him down here in the first place. “Will you tell me about the senator?”

Part of him wants to echo James’s question straight back – _do you really want to know?_ – but perhaps more to the point – “Why? You must’ve read all about it by now.”

“I haven’t, actually,” he murmurs levelly, eyes fixed determinedly on the road. “Lu… suggested I not. And I have… learned to listen to her advice.”

Alexander mulls a response to that for a long time. From the drive home from the airport when he returned from D.C., scared and angry, to Washington’s impromptu visit to tell him about Conway facing charges, to his next face-to-face conversation with John again that December, he’s just… never been able to fully encapsulate his own conflicted feelings and put them to words. Largely abandoned the effort to reconcile his rational understanding of Conway’s abuses with his own feelings of complicity in them some time ago.

“I was sixteen,” he starts slowly. “Away from the island for the first time, hand-selected for one of the most prestigious high school programs in the country by George Washington himself, and very preoccupied with my own cleverness. Thomas Conway was… a very dangerous combination of engaged and interested and at some point, I realized that his interest ran… deeper.”

James remains quiet. Alexander closes his eyes and tips his head back against the seat. “I don’t think he set out… I don’t think it was insincere. Not entirely, anyway. That… place where we carved out that initial sort of relationship. I think in a lot of ways, he found himself in over his head as much as I did.” And softer, he adds: “The page program was never supposed to be for kids like me.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s just another way of influence-peddling. Politicians’ kids, and lobbyists’ kids, campaign donors. Kids who know the city, know their sponsors, and don’t... question their _right_ to be there. Not connectionless orphans with inferiority complexes and something to prove. And he was… _nice_ , and nervous, and terrified when I finally called him out on his interest, and I just… didn’t want to lose what we already had.”

_Like you did the math and decided that was an acceptable bargain_.

They ride the rest of the way to the hotel in silence. James taps his fingers rhythmically on the steering wheel, and Alexander wants to find it annoying but it mirrors the way he occupies his own restless hands by twisting them in the denim at the tops of his thighs.

When they pull into the hotel parking lot, James surprises him by skirting past the portico and pulling into an empty space. He turns the key but doesn’t remove it from the ignition, and lets out a long, low, weary sigh and runs his hands through his hair before forcing himself with obvious effort to turn and look Alexander straight in the eye.

“I’m really sorry.”

“Yeah,” he returns softly. “I know.”

“I’m glad you decided to come.”

He bites his lip and looks back down at his lap. “Yeah,” he repeats. “Me too.”

It’s not forgiveness; not yet. But nor does it seem quite so relegated to the wildest depths of his imagination.

“You’re staying through tomorrow?”

“Yeah. Flight’s mid-morning on Tuesday.”

“Where to?”

The corner of Alexander’s mouth pulls up slightly in a lopsided smile, and he shrugs and says simply, “Home.”

 

x---x

 

When he turns on his phone back in the hotel room, he has the following texts:

_From: Eliza S._

_Why does John think we’re hiding you in NY?_

_From: Hugh Mulligan_

_Dude, wtf did you do_

_From: Hercules M._

_Call that bf of yours before he mounts a search party plz_

_From: G. Laf_

_While I appreciate your need for space, I would appreciate even more if you would communicate to John that you are not dead in a field in Virginia, bon?_

_From: John Laurens_

_Look, we have a lot to talk about, ideally in person, but you’re freaking me out._

_From: John Laurens_

_I’m sorry, alright, I disappeared and should have told you I was with Addy but in my defense YOU NEVER ASKED and I’m asking now, alright?_

_From: John Laurens_

_Goddammit Alex._

He throws himself onto the bed and into a pile of pillows and taps out a slow reply.

_To: John Laurens_

_Are you calling everyone I’ve ever met in New York, or…_

And a second later, gets back:

_From: John Laurens_

_Goddammit Alex._

_To: John Laurens_

_Trust me?_

That response takes a little longer. He kicks off his shoes while he waits, and then starts flipping through the list of local delivery places to distract himself from the knot forming in his stomach.

He’s trying to decide if a pizza box of leftovers would fit into the room’s mini-fridge when his phone finally buzzes again.

_From: John Laurens_

_Trust you, yes._

_Worry about you? Also yes._

So he sighs and sends him a picture, a selfie he took with Raquel, grinning with the tip of her tongue poking out between her teeth.

_To: John Laurens_

_[img]_

_Laf accused me of swinging a wrecking ball through my life; thought maybe it was time to start trying to rebuild some of it instead for once._

There’s no immediate reply to that, and he doesn’t expect one.

Tossing aside the booklet of hotel information, abruptly certain that he’d barely find it in himself to choke much down anyway, he scrolls slowly through his contacts list on his phone and pulls one up that he’s been diligently ignoring for several days now. Checks the time, accounts for the difference, decides it isn’t too late, and presses the button to put the call through.

It picks up midway through the second ring. “ _Hey_.”

“Hi.”

It’s quiet for a long, drawn-out minute. Rationally, he knows he made the call, should figure out how to start a conversation, but it all gets jumbled up somewhere between his brain and his heart and his mouth.

“ _Neddy and John are worried about you._ ”

“Neddy, too?”

That elicits a small chuckle from Mister Stevens. “ _He tried to play it off a little, but…_ ”

“I’m alright,” he sighs.

“ _Taking a little breather?_ ”

He chews on his lip and forces himself to get to the point. “Yeah, um… what are you doing Tuesday afternoon? ‘Round two o’clock or so?”

There’s a brief pause, and then a bemused, “ _I daresay my schedule is open._ ”

“Um… do you want to maybe… come pick me up at the airport?”

At the end of a long pause, Mister Stevens does an impressive job at masking the thick emotion in his voice when he answers, “ _I’d like that very much, Alexander_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final chapter Tuesday!


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Alexander forgot about Burr's wedding.

Admittedly, he forgot entirely about Aaron Burr’s wedding.

He’s sitting in the third row of otherwise empty bleachers on Wednesday afternoon, listening to the chaos of hundreds of teenagers flood out of the adjacent building at the end of the school day, when an email pings his phone. A quick reminder that their tuxes are ready, and he freezes and stares at the date and realizes that the wedding starts less than two hours after his flight back to D.C. lands on Saturday.

Maybe enough time to get home, get dressed, and get up to Maryland in time for the ceremony, but he doubts it; adds it to the list of things for which he’ll owe endless apologies to John.

Steady footsteps crunch across the gravel path that runs past the tennis courts and to the track, and then the riser shakes slightly as the newcomer heads towards him. Alexander fixes a sardonic grin on his face and turns to look at his former teacher, hand shielding his eyes from the sun’s glare. “You could have come inside, you know,” Mister Pendleton points out as he sidles in along the row and takes up a more sprawling posture, feet propped on the bench below. “No one would have given you any trouble.”

He shrugs. “I’d say it was a nostalgia thing, but I guess all of this is new.”

Mister Pendleton hums and peers out over the athletic complex. “Field house is the same. Track was replaced.” He kicks at the seat under his foot and sends up an almighty _clanging_ noise. “Same rickety bleachers as the day I met you sitting right here, waiting for Edward to finish up cross country practice a couple weeks into your freshman year.”

Nostalgia indeed. “You realize that was ten years ago this fall?”

“Well, I’m getting old.” Alexander chuckles, eyes still roving around the empty space. No practice today, unless there’s a team getting ready in a locker room still. “So.” Mister Pendleton nudges his foot with the side of his shoe and waits until he turns to meet his gaze again. “You’re back.”

“For a few days.”

“Can’t say I expected to see your face around these parts ever again.”

“Can’t say my face expected to be here.” He shifts, mirrors the older man’s posture with his feet dangling over onto the bench below. “But after last week’s, ah… very public meltdown… the president suggested I take some time.” And he blinks and glances back around towards the building where he spent his high school career and shakes his head. “ _God_ , that sounds weird even to me. Sitting here, of all places, and talking about George Washington.”

Mister Pendleton huffs out a soft laugh. “For what it’s worth, it doesn’t sound so weird to me. With some students… you just know. That they’re going places.”

“Ever have one go to the White House before?”

“No, but it was pretty evident early on that you were in a league all of your own. Even when you were sitting here,” he taps the metal seat between them. “Quiet, shy, or both, but always hard at work while you waited.”

A darkly amused part of Alexander wishes John were here to hear him described as either quiet _or_ shy. But he just points out softly, “I only moved in with them the week before that school year started.”

“I never knew that.”

“We’d been friends a long time,” he clarifies. “But… well. It was a year and a half since my mom’s death – a year since the cousin who took me in killed himself, and James split literally hours later – when Family Services finally got the placement in order with Tom, and those months… took a toll. And it was a long and rough transition to what should have been a familiar, comfortable home.” He forces another smile and echoes, “ _Quiet, shy, or both_ – probably not a set of descriptors used often before or since.”

When Mister Pendleton doesn’t respond to that right away, he scuffs his heel against the seat and straightens up with a sigh. “Sorry. I just saw my brother for the first time in almost eleven years before I came here, I’m feeling a little reflective.”

“You can talk to me.”

“Yeah, I know.” And he does, truly. It wouldn’t be the first time Mister Pendleton took on the burden of Alexander offloading some emotional weight in his presence. But he shifts topics instead and asks, “Do you know who James Madison is?”

That gets him an exasperated look. “Well if I didn’t before, I certainly do after this past weekend.”

“He said something to me last week. In the midst of me… making a mess of my personal and professional lives in one fell swoop. He said that the president would _move mountains_ for me; the implication being, I think, that I was an idiot for not simply letting the White House handle the whole affair.”

“I mean…”

“Et tu?” Mister Pendleton chuckles and nods at him to continue. “And I just… he’s not wrong, I guess. But Washington’s not the only one, and certainly not the first, and I guess what I’m trying to say is that not every teacher would spend countless hours on the seeming fool’s errand that was my page program application and, while I have to concede the program itself could have gone better to say the least, on balance it has… opened doors to a life I would never have dreamed possible when you first met me. Sitting in these rickety old bleachers.”

“Any good teacher would have done it.”

“Well, not every teacher would have dropped everything to come pluck a former student out of the path of a hurricane either.”

“Such as it is, my memory of the incident isn’t so much plucking you _out_ of the path as simply moving you to higher ground to weather it, but I’ll take your point.”

Alexander turns to peer up at his face. “I really do appreciate everything you did for me.”

“You said so at the time,” Mister Pendleton points out gently.

“Well, I’m older now. Wiser. My gratitude is worth more.”

He gets a hummed acknowledgement, and then they sit in silence for a minute or two. “So what changed your mind?” Mister Pendleton asks eventually. “Last I saw you, you sounded awful determined never to set foot back on this island; somehow, I suspect your desire to refinance on your appreciation for deeds long-past wasn’t the sole impetus for your trip.”

“I dunno,” he sighs. “My boyfriend maybe sort of yelled at me about not letting myself trust anyone ever, even still, and maybe he’s got a point, but. I _do_ know there have been a number of people in my life _since_ whatever day, when I was twelve or thirteen, when I decided that I could rely on no one but myself, who have unequivocally had my back regardless, and regardless of whether I was too blind or selfish to notice or acknowledge it.”

“Alexander, your world fell apart and then it fell apart again six months later.” He glances sidelong but can’t quite bring himself to meet the man’s eyes. “It exacted a toll that no decent person would begrudge you.”

“And Tom never _did_ begrudge it,” he acknowledges readily. “But that whole _year and a half and a rough transition_ thing… among all of the other bullshit dragged up in the past week was the inescapable fact that some of those wounds were maybe better papered over with time and distance, but they were never really given a chance to heal.

“And now… I think about my life ahead with John, whose father basically told me – his father is Henry Laurens, by the way, did you know I was dating the Speaker’s son?"

He gets a coolly raised brow and a dry look, and Mister Pendleton repeats: “If I didn’t before this weekend, I certainly do now." 

“Touché. Well, back at Christmas, Henry basically told me… _welcome to the family, whenever you’re ready to join it_ , and while I appreciate the sentiment, I can’t fathom… extending that kind of trust in that direction before I’ve let myself finally, _fully_ accept the one that’s been waiting for me right here with infinite fucking patience for the last ten years.”

 

x---x

 

It’s a different house. A condo actually, with a deck instead of the old overgrown yard and they sat on that deck in companionable near-silence for most of Tuesday evening, except for the few hours Mister Stevens spent at the restaurant and Alexander stayed out on the deck in total silence instead and readjusted to the tropical ocean air.  

Now – nearly a day later, after finally accompanying Mister Pendleton into distantly familiar hallways, an encounter with a very startled former chemistry teacher, and then a long continuation of their track-side conversation over coffee in town – he lets himself into the apartment with the spare key kept on hand for Edward’s visits home.

It’s a smaller space than the house where he lived throughout high school. Downsized for practicality’s sake, and never mind that very little was ultimately salvaged after the hurricane six years ago, but it still feels… familiar. In its way. Like an unshakeable sense of deja-vu, or some bizarre alternative timeline of his life.

Or maybe one that he’s only just finding it in himself to grasp for and cling to, this space he’s only known in pictures after Edward’s visits, but one where the door has always stood open to him as well.

Mister Stevens is at work when he gets in. Alexander contemplates wandering down to the boardwalk but ultimately decides on a quiet night in with some soup he found in a cupboard, a dumb show he finds on the television, and eventually a nap in the spare room from which he wakes with a start at the sound of the front door snapping closed.

By the time he extracts himself from the bed, footsteps have echoed through the living room and the sound of the sliding door off the kitchen tells him that Mister Stevens retreated out onto the deck. He follows, barely has the door opened, and is accosted with the smell of cigarette smoke.

“Oh.” Mister Stevens sits up straighter in surprise and lays his phone back down on the table. “Figured you were still out, I was about to text.”

Alexander wrinkles his nose and glances pointedly at his _other_ hand. “When did _that_ start?”

The older man glances guiltily down at the cigarette he’s holding and sighs. “Might have found room again for the occasional old vice or two once you boys were out of the house. Promised Neddy it’d be sparing,” he quirks a brow and offers a wry smile, “and only in the direst emergencies.”

Alexander grins and takes the other seat and the little bistro table. “Is my presence stressing you out?”

“Your _presence_ , no.” His grin broadens. “Literally everything else about you right now? Perhaps.”

“Probably the bluntest you’ve spoken to me since the day Washington turned up.”

“Well, I think we both know _that’s_ not true.” Alexander huffs out a soft laugh and shrugs in resignation. “For what it’s worth…”

Heat rises in his cheeks and he hastens to explain, “I’m really not mad about -”

Mister Stevens holds up a hand to cut him off. “For what it’s worth. No one told me about what you’d written. Madison just said that you’d _disclosed_ what had happened. Washington didn’t mention it until we’d already spoken at length in person, and then acknowledged a certain… part of him felt obligated; part was wary about the boundaries of trust and privacy against the… possibility that there might be some value. Down the road. As you came to terms with everything.”

“You think this past week is what he had in mind?”

Mister Stevens exhales noisily. “No, not so much.”

Alexander chews on his lip for a long moment and forces his eyes up. “I know I was never very… open about anything, ever. Or grateful, for all the effort you put in to getting me help while I dragged my feet every step of the way. But, um – you did, you know?” Mister Stevens blinks at him curiously. “You got me help. Doctor Kortright was… she’s a good one. And I’m not sure I’d have made it through college in one piece without that foundation. Let alone… gotten where I am today.”

Mister Stevens searches his eyes, and asks, “Where are you today?”

He shrugs. “Besides back in this godforsaken place?”

“Ha, ha.”

“I’m… I think maybe for the first time, _planning_ for the future; instead of just treating it as some nebulous escape from whatever unhappy present.”

“Or whatever unhappy past.”

“Or that,” he concedes readily. “Though I’ll grant that returning to D.C. was never the best laid plans for escaping _that_ aspect of unhappy past.”

After a last drag from the cigarette, he stubs it out on a saucer plate and sits back and contemplates Alexander for the span of several slow heartbeats. “And as the adrenaline fades?”

“Am I going to run, d’you mean?” His expression doesn’t change. Alexander shrugs again. “No. Don’t get me wrong, I tried. But Lafayette hunted me down and the president hasn’t lost all patience with me yet somehow, so. I’m weighing my options. Probably scale back my workload at the very least.”

“Probably not a bad idea.”

“Doctor Hosack left me a message the other day; when your shrink cold-calls _you_ after seeing your name in the news, it seems like a good time to take a step back.”

A heavier silence descends between them, and he can tell Mister Stevens is working up to something, something he worries will anger or upset him, reminiscent of that careful edge they walked with one another in the aftermath of his page term.

The question he finally brings himself to ask surprises him though. “Would it bother you if I reached out to James?”

Alexander blinks stupidly. “Are you that big a glutton for punishment?”

Mister Stevens smiles faintly, but it doesn’t mask the melancholy deep in his eyes. “I worry about him. The guilt he already had for… leaving the way he did, his _indifference_ towards you those last few months.” Alexander sucks in a slow breath and draws his feet up onto his chair. “Finding out what happened four years later was devastating. And only compounded the guilt for neglecting and abandoning you.” He reaches for the pack of cigarettes, starts to pull out another one, swears softly under his breath, and drops the box back on the table. “He might not be interested – not least after the tone our conversation took when he called last week – but he might benefit from… _some_ more steady connection to happier times. And to the years he missed.”

Alexander props his chin on his knees and smiles faintly at the discarded pack. “I won’t tell Neddy on you.” Mister Stevens doesn’t prevaricate with reaching for a new one and the lighter in his shirt pocket. “And yeah, no, that’s… if that’s what you want.”

Mister Stevens nods slowly, expression discerning, like he’s looking for some sign it troubles him nonetheless.

It doesn’t though – he doesn’t think. Maybe that’s part of letting go, or moving on, or maybe it’s just part of this new reality where too many secrets are laid bare and there’s nothing to do but accept it.

“I really do hate it here,” he says after another protracted silence.

“I am aware.”

“Everything moves at an absolutely glacial pace. It’s tiny and remote. We’re like… the redheaded stepchild of the United States and it’s stupid.”

“You’re not wrong.”

“I can’t even appreciate the ocean anymore after my last several days here were spent in a surreal state of disbelief at the sheer scale of the damage wrought by the hurricane while I was _supposed_ to be settling into a dorm room in Manhattan.”

“I understand; really I do.”

“But.” Mister Stevens raises his brows expectantly. “While I’d never seen this place,” he nods back towards the sliding door into the kitchen, “before yesterday, and while maybe it’s not the only one I have anymore – it means the world to me that I can still call it _home_ so long as you’re here.”

 

x---x

 

Saturday morning thunderstorms in Atlanta mean he is most definitely not going to make it to Aaron’s wedding. With the delay leaving Saint Croix, and then another taking off from Atlanta, he doesn’t even land in D.C. until twenty minutes _after_ the ceremony was due to begin. It takes just over an hour to disembark at the gate, wait for the more staggered weekend metro service to bring the right train through the station, make the right transfer, and get back home – and the wedding is all the way up at the far reaches of the metro in Maryland, plus another five or ten minutes in a cab to the venue.

What he is _not_ expecting, however, is to find a note pinned to the garment bag with his tuxedo in it that just reads: _Reception starts at 6._ ♥

And perhaps more startling is the fact that said garment bag is being held up expectantly by one Hugh Mulligan even as he carries on whatever conversation he’s got ongoing with Edward, who’s sitting half-twisted around on the sofa with a beer in his hand while Hugh perches on one of the counter stools with a can of soda open next to him.

“Oh,” Alexander says as he stumbles through the door. “Um. Hi?”

“Hey, _Publius_ ,” Hugh snickers. “Shit, all that time you spent holed up in your room on your computer. _Working_ ,” he air-quotes, and Alexander drops his bag and executes a mock-bow for his former roommate. “Now,” Hugh checks his watch. “Not gonna make cocktail hour, but that gives us a nice leisurely hour to squeeze you into this thing and get to your party on time.”

“It’s not _my_ party, and that seems, uh…” he glances at his phone and frowns. “Optimistic for the metro.”

Hugh lets out a long-suffering sigh and points out, “Herc and I drove down, knucklehead.”

“Ah.” He looks over to where Edward is studiously avoiding being drawn into the discussion. “I am not… altogether confident that anyone wants me crashing their wedding right now, to be entirely honest.”

“I have reliable intelligence that a number of guests have lodged queries as to your whereabouts, as well as the groom himself.”

While he doesn’t precisely doubt the _accuracy_ of that report, he wonders as to the _tone_ behind said queries. He and Aaron have never had the warmest of friendships and none of the long foundation of Aaron’s acquaintance with John, and he’s only even met his fiancée precisely _once_ , during spring break of his first year at Columbia.

Combined with his very belated realization that Aaron’s name had _also_ turned up a couple of times in his emails with Conway, and in such a way that highlighted his former classmate’s close connection with the senator who sponsored him to the program, it doesn’t seem unfathomable that his presence is not particularly desired.

So he hovers there in the doorway for a few seconds, indecisive, until Edward exhales noisily and stands and makes for his bedroom. “Go dance with your boyfriend, Alexander, _Christ_.”

His door clicks closed; at least he didn’t slam it, but Alexander still stares after him, wide-eyed and uncertain. Hugh rises from his stool and casts about awkwardly for a moment, before gesturing up the stairs with the hand still holding the garment bag. “I’ll just take this…”

“Yeah, I’ll be up in a… thanks.”

He follows Edward. Pushes into his room with a quick tap of warning and finds his friend sprawled sideways across his comforter, staring up at the ceiling. Alexander lies down beside him, mirroring his posture, and asks after a few beats, “Are you mad?”

“No.” Another noisy sigh risks belying the claim. “Deal with John’s mood swings this past week and you’d be on edge too.”

_Oh_. He worries his lower lip between his teeth. “So… more than a couple dances, then?”

A quick startled laugh breaks through Edward’s stony façade. “I dunno, man. He loves you, God help the poor fool.” Alexander smiles faintly and turns over onto his side. But Edward keeps his gaze fixed up at the ceiling, and he murmurs, “I wish I had a better idea what was going on in your head sometimes.” And quieter, he adds: “I didn’t want you to have to make the Florida trip on your own. John didn’t either.”

Alexander props himself up on his elbow and frowns at Edward until he shifts his attention and meets his eyes. “I think you understand, better than John, why it was always going to have to be that way.”

Edward shrugs dully, wipes once at his eyes, and then sits up and runs his hands through his hair. Shakes his head once to clear it, and forces a smile. “So. How’s dad?”

“Like he wasn’t on the phone with you the second I headed for my gate.” He gets a light punch to the arm. “He’s alright, I think. Little lonely maybe. I told him I’d come visit again before the holidays.”

“You going to invite me along next time, or…?”

“Yeah, I think we got our decade-overdue conversation squared away on this trip.” But Edward still just looks melancholy despite his best efforts. “Seriously, should I stay?”

He waves him off though. “ _Seriously_ , go dance with your boyfriend, you got a lot more ground to cover on that front. Actually,” he climbs to his feet, “I’ll ride up with you. Hugh seems pretty cool, we’re gonna find some mischief while we wait to pick you all up again.”

“We all gonna fit?”

Edward pats him on the top of his head. “You’re tiniest, I’m sure John and Hercules will make you squeeze back into the third row.”

 

x---x

By the time Alexander is showered and groomed and dressed to Hugh’s very exacting standards that take him back to the earliest page days and Hercules compulsively correcting ties, they’re running barely on time. Which means, as they make the scenic loop through the gardens to get to the right building and Hugh helps him shrug into his jacket and Edward whistles at him from the passenger seat, he’s dashing into the entryway just as the wedding party is lining up to make their choreographed entrance into the ballroom.

“Oh,” he says, as the coordinator fumbles over her instructions and stops to stare at him.

“Well, look what the cat dragged in.”

He blinks over at the lineup of bridesmaids in front of Theodosia and sees a familiar shock of artfully pinned red hair. “Um. Hey, Kitty.”

She skips out of line, much to the visible chagrin of the coordinator trying to get them ready to walk in, and gives him a hug that is very careful not the disturb her bouquet and gown, and a light peck on the cheek. “Long time.”

“It’s good to see you. You look good.”

The coordinator clears her throat; Kitty winks, all dancing mischief, and wipes at the spot where she’d kissed his cheek. “Can’t send you in to John with lipstick on your face.”

“Right.” He sidles awkwardly past the assembled wedding party, keenly cognizant of a range of gazes fixed on him, from impatient to curious to nonplussed. “I’ll just…” He stops again at the closed double doors and glances back. “Are there two hundred people staring at this door waiting for you all to walk in?”

“Something like that,” Theodosia answers from the back with a wry smile, Aaron looking contemplative by her side as he watches him fumble about.

“Right. I’ll just, uh… sneak in once y’all are… yeah.”

And he scoots out of the way and ducks into a side lounge that’s empty, what with everyone preparing for the grand entrance and dinner. The sounds of brisk footsteps follow though, and he turns and finds Aaron slipping into the room behind him. “Alexander.”

“Mister Burr.” Aaron just shakes his head, but then cracks a reluctant smile when Alexander adds, “And Mrs. Burr – Theodosia looks lovely.”

“She does, doesn’t she?”

“Congratulations.” He offers his hand and Aaron takes it, eyes glittering curiously. “Sorry I missed the ceremony; late flight.”

“So John said; I thought perhaps he was making your excuses.”

Heat rises in his face and he shrugs, awkward. “Honestly, thought it might be best if I stayed away but.”

Aaron waves him off, sparing a quick glance back into the hall, where the first bridesmaid and groomsman are already making their way through the doors and up to the head table. “It’s good you came.”

“Yeah?”

For a long moment, Aaron holds his gaze, inscrutable as ever; then tells him, very seriously, “You have friends here, Alexander.”

He stares at him for a moment, unable to drum up an adequate response; and then the coordinator is whisper-shouting, “Mister Burr? _Sir_!” and he grins and shoos him along.

“Go. Someone’s throwing you a very grand party.”

“Hm. Table five,” he calls over his shoulder as he moves to resume his position by Theodosia’s side. “Between John and Eliza.”

 

He waits until the sounds from the ballroom pick up with conversation again, and slips in as they’re beginning to serve dinner at the head table. No one pays him any mind as he weaves towards the indicated table, but the table itself falls comically silent as he pulls back the empty chair and squeezes himself into the circle.

“So.” He fiddles with the placard with his name and meal choice. “Hey, guys, wow, it’s like – page reunion table, huh?”

With the exceptions of Peggy and Polly, it truly is. He’s got Eliza immediately to his right with Peggy, and then on Polly’s other side is Abe, who he hasn’t seen since their Columbia days, with Mary, and he has some vague recollection of hearing about an engagement there. Next to her is one of her old Webster roommates, Abigail. Robert and Hercules are next, and he knows they’ve maintained the friendship they struck up from neighboring rooms at Webster.

And then of course, rounding out the circle on his left – John. “You made it,” he quips sardonically, brow quirked.

“I got your note.” John’s face softens. “And a personal valet, which was cool.”

“Your tie’s all wrong,” Hercules comments idly from John’s other side, and Alexander stops himself just in time from checking it in alarm as John reaches over to smack Hercules in the arm. “Was worth a shot.”

Alexander observes the faces around him, from curious to carefully neutral, to gazes awkwardly flitting away when their eyes risk meeting, and he sighs. “Do we need to do the whole elephant in the room thing? I mean… no one’s all that surprised, right?”

Polly’s hand shoots up into the air, and then Peggy’s follows more slowly and she looks a little upset. “Are you… okay?”

“Yeah, it’s been… you know, I… yeah.”

Eliza snorts softly under her breath, but reaches under the table for his hand and squeezes it tight. “That was convincing.”

Robert holds up a finger and abruptly shifts the subject. “How on earth did Publius come about?”

“President Jay at Columbia suggested I find a way to channel my more annoying energies in political discourse to a less… _in person_ format. Because it’s the twenty-first century and apparently we do not _shout in the square_ anymore.”

“Ahh,” Abe grins. “Clever.”

Still a sore point with John though, he knows. He leans in and waits until John mirrors him until their temples are nearly touching and murmurs, “Maybe we can find somewhere to talk after dinner?”

“The gardens are nice,” John offers by way of response.

A few minutes later, and dinner makes its way around to their table. Nobody brings up Conway, but the deflection method of choice seems to be heckling him mercilessly about Publius and testing out his powers of prediction.

_(“Who’s going to catch the bouquet?_

_“When will the first Baby Bartow-Burr come along?_

_“Who’s going to be elected president next year?”)_

He laughs off the first two questions and declines to speculate on the last, given recent events, but he does catch Polly by the arm when she rises and skirts around the table to go find a restroom, and beckons her to lean in so he can murmur in her ear. “Will you do me a favor? Next time you see your dad, would you tell him I said _you’re welcome_?”

She laughs and blinks down at him. “What?”

“He’ll understand.”

“Oh,” she shrugs. “Okay.” And she dashes off, and that’s that.

 

He finally slips away with John after the bride and groom share their first dance, and the gathering devolves into semi-organized chaos. A number of guests make for the open bar, a smattering join Aaron and Theodosia on the dance floor, and there’s a small crowd that head out onto a covered pavilion just outside the ballroom for some air.

John leads the way, descending from the far end of the pavilion into the gardens beyond. Dusk is descending rapidly upon them, but pathway lights guide the way and, indeed, give the whole thing an extra ambiance that he’d likely really enjoy, were his insides not twisting up into tighter and tighter knots in anticipation of the conversation ahead.

They walk seemingly at random, but John continues winding them further from the pavilion, until the only sounds besides their own footsteps are chirping crickets, the bubbling of a tiny brook running roughly parallel to the walkway. The faint noises of traffic in the distance, because it’s the D.C. metro and the illusion of isolation is just that.

John slows, and absently kicks a pebble down the path a few times until they come up on a bench. He brushes it clean of debris from a tree overhead and then sits heavily and stares up at Alexander with wide, doleful eyes that are full of uncertainly and frustration and a little bit of pain that kills him to see. “So, how was your trip?”

“Good; overdue.”

“Why now?”

He lets out a heavy breath and lowers himself onto the bench by John’s side. “Um…well. Two things. James saw my name pop back up in the news, and the speculation and implication, and he…”

He trails off and glances around. Worries his lip for a moment while they sit there in silence and then backtracks. “Actually? Let’s talk about that later. When we’re not both two drinks in.”

“Three,” John amends his own count. “You missed cocktail hour.”

“All the more reason.”

“Yeah,” John shifts sideways and studies his face for a moment, curiosity dueling with worry before he puts it out of his mind. “Yeah, okay. What’s the second thing?”

Bracing himself, he repeats his words to Washington a week earlier. “I called Conway.” John’s brows fly up towards his hairline and he sits up straighter on the bench, still angled sideways to face Alexander. “Friday morning. And I told myself at the time that it was… the right thing to do, to warn him that… well. I don’t know.”

“Alex.”

“I lost my temper; and I got upset. And in the end, I think some part of me just wanted the chance to confront him and air those grievances, because I didn’t seize on that opportunity when I saw him in New York.” The memory of that encounter threatens to raise a red flush in his cheeks; while enlightening in some ways, it had proven decidedly humiliating in others. “Not very effectively, anyway.”

Voice very determinedly neutral, John asks, “Did it help?”

“I think at the very least, it helped me understand that Neddy was right months ago, that I was never going to get anywhere sorting and resolving the myriad conflicted and fucked up emotions surrounding James until I made the leap and actually saw him again.”

John nods slowly; brow furrowed, looking bothered and Alexander can hardly blame him.

“I talked to Washington last weekend.”

“Yeah, I heard about your getaway.”

Alexander smiles faintly. “And I’ve spent the week thinking, and I called Morris and Mercer and Lafayette during my layover, and I am going to leave the NEC staff. But I’ll stay on with Mercer’s team, and maybe take on a little more responsibility on that front.”

“They gonna move you to the Pentagon? Bit of a commute but not awful, I guess.”

“We talked about it; considered the EEOB, too. We’ll figure it out, but… Laf agreed maybe that would be best. A little distance from the administration.” He quirks a grin and adds, “He also seemed to think that the press secretary might strangle me the next time she sees me, so.”

John kicks gently at his foot and quietly jokes, “Can you blame her?” And then he sort of deflates all at once and rests his head on Alexander’s shoulder with a tired sigh. Takes his hand and threads their fingers together and takes a few deep breaths before confessing softly, “There’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about for a while now, too. Wasn’t sure how to bring it up.”

“Okay?”

He squeezes Alexander’s hand. “I’ve been looking at residency programs back home.”

“Oh.”

“Not like… I haven’t gotten beyond researching options. But I just…”

“It’s okay,” Alexander interrupts his fretting. “I get it; I mean, _God_ , if this last week is anything to go by… I get it.”

John sits up again and wipes his hands over his face. Smiles over at him a little wobbly. “I’d say you should come with me, or follow after Washington’s term is up but… somehow, I don’t see Charleston in your near future. Or anywhere else in South Carolina.”

“I think,” Alexander muses slowly – almost revelatory – “I might like to go back to New York. Actually.”

“Okay.”

“Maybe law school.”

“Yeah,” John grins. “Yeah, I could see that.”

“I’m actually going to go up there for a couple days this week; milk this whole impromptu vacation thing. I owe Olivia and Coleman an apology. And I owe Professor Paine… a much bigger apology.” John’s brow furrows quizzically, and Alexander shrugs, resigned. “I put him in an awkward spot that he in no way deserved.”

John declines to probe any further, just hums thoughtfully and shifts a little closer, draws an arm around Alexander’s shoulders. “We’ll make it work, yeah?”

“We made it work all the way across the sea.”

“So we did.” John presses a gentle kiss to his temple, and any lingering knot of anxiety finally dissolves from Alexander’s stomach. “So – what happens now?”

“Not a clue.” Alexander turns his face to catch John’s lips in a tentative kiss. “But… we are at a wedding; we could dance.”

“What, here?” Alexander rises and takes John by the hand, grinning mischievously as he pulls him to his feet as well. “I believe the custom is to dance to, you know – music.”

Cheerfully ignoring him, Alexander drapes his arms over John’s shoulders and tucks his face in close by his neck. “So hum something.”

He doesn’t; but his hands do eventually drift down to wrap tightly around Alexander’s waist and they sway like that in the gardens – no beat, no melody, save the chittering song of the crickets, the gentle sounds of the brook, a faint wind rustling through the silhouette of trees surrounding them as darkness falls.

“We could do this someday, you know,” John whispers by his ear, so soft he can barely make out the words over the ambient sounds around them.

“Someday,” Alexander agrees. “If you put up with me long enough to reach _someday_.”

“Put up with you this long.”

“That’s true.” He grins and tilts his head to nibble on John’s earlobe. “If we hurry, you might make the bouquet toss.”

“Noo, you didn’t see the determination in Kitty’s eyes earlier. I wouldn’t dare go up against that.”

“If you’re sure.” John tightens his hold, and that answers that. “They are going to start wondering where we disappeared to.”

“Let them wonder. It’s a long party, we have time.”

“Time for what?” Face tucked close as it is, John cannot see the suggestive wriggle of his eyebrows; but he can certainly hear it in his tone, and he sighs and shakes his head.

“I _was_ going to say _to make the moment last_ , but you might have just killed it.”

He laughs, and pulls back so they can press forehead-to-forehead. “We going to be okay?”

Because in the end, he knows the wounds of the last week are not so readily assuaged; the blows he dealt to the trust and communication between them, and then compounded by his weeklong disappearing act. Wounds that will demand further conversation and evoke frustrations and maybe even some tears.

But John just cups his face and pulls him in for a brief but deep kiss that makes his head spin a little. “Yeah; we’ll be okay.”

“You’re very sure.”

“Time, Alexander,” John smiles calmly. “We have time, as much time as we need, to figure it out.”

And that’s… at once startling, and startlingly simple. For someone who’s spent most of his life running from the inescapable demons of his past and pushing relentlessly forward, forever preoccupied with what the future holds in store.

Simply…

Time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *peeks out from behind hands* 
> 
> Wellll, that's it. 
> 
> I'm going to mark the series complete, but I won't swear that an occasional oneshot might not make it into the lineup. Or appear randomly over on Tumblr. This has been my playground universe this long, I don't expect that'll change anytime soon. ;)  
> (so, I dunno, if there's anything you're dying to see, drop me a line here or on tumblr and I'll jot it down for future consideration)  
> (also I'm always entirely too enthusiastic about ~~wordvomiting~~ discussing this universe in general so don't be shy about any questions or headcanons or anything) :D
> 
> Thanks for reading; thanks for the kudos. Thanks for those of you who kept me company in the comments throughout this insanity. I hope it did not disappoint.
> 
> Until next time, friends -

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumbl Me](https://faceofpoe.tumblr.com/)


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